How I Set Goals (including, but BEYOND money goals)

This transcript has been automatically created and minimally edited/formatted. As such, there may be some errors in the text.
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[Episode preview]
I do not set goals as a way to define success. When I set a goal, I am not looking at that goal and telling myself if I don’t reach it, then I am a failure or if I do reach it, then I am a success. A failure is just one tiny little step in this entire never ending journey. My goals and whether or not I reach them have no bearing on who I am as a person.
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[Podcast Intro]
Hey, welcome to the Sustainable Success podcast. This is your home for honest conversations about building and running an online business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue. I’m Carly Jo Bell, the Sustainable Success mentor and your guide on this journey with self trust as your North Star and foundations under your feet, you’ll be able to look external for ideas, internal, for answers and build your business your way. Let’s dive in.
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[Episode begins]
2023 has been a pretty slow year for me in so many ways financially and beyond. Like I know that, you know, I think it was in November of last year that I started our rebranding process and that has gone on for about a year. It has been a financially slow year. It has been a year of a lot of, kind of like pulling things back so that we can eventually move forward. But kind of having to take a bunch of steps in the middle to actually be able to move forward and be quote unquote ahead of where we were before we started this whole process and all that to say, it’s just, it’s been a slow year. I could, I could go on and on and on, but it’s been a slow year. But back in August, I decided that I kind of was ready to like, not just feel like I was in this slowness anymore. I decided that I wanted to actually have like a little bit more like a liveness, a little bit more excitement, a little bit more just like things happening in my business than I had had for this whole year. So I set a goal. I set a financial goal even which I actually had not set a financial goal for all of 2023 before the month of August. I set this financial goal and I set it at a number that is one that I have like reached many times before this, but it was one that I actually hadn’t reached since I think January or so of this year. So it’s been, what is that seven months since I had reached that financial goal? I’m like, OK, you know, I know that I can reach that goal. I don’t fully know how because my business is very different in August of 2023 than it was in January of 2023. But I’m gonna try it. I’m gonna go for it. I’m gonna, like, see what we can do here. And I know because I’ve reached it before that it’s possible. So I know I’ll be able to figure it out. So I set this goal and surprise, surprise, I reached it. It was really exciting and the whole month even was a heck of a lot of fun. The whole month I like, had this little tracker where I was writing down every single payment that came in and, you know who it was from and how much it was and, you know, kind of filled in this little thermometer kind of thing to get to the big goal that I had when I would reach like one third of the goal or one half of the goal or whatever it was. I’d like, take a picture and I’d send it to my boyfriend. Like, look, I’m making progress, you know, I just had a great time going after this goal. Now, of course, I did have like, literally in the last couple of days I had to pull a couple of like rabbits out of hats to be able to actually reach the goal. And that was fun. That’s probably a whole other conversation in itself. Like how do you make cash fast? I made cash fast and that was awesome. But it was honestly, it just was a really, really, really fun month and it felt really nice to set a goal and then to actually go through the entire process and then reach it. Because again, this is something I actually hadn’t, at least in this way done for the whole year just because of things that we had been working on today though. I want to talk about how I use goals in my business because I don’t know about you. But I really feel like the way that a lot of people in the online business world talk about goal setting is like you need to set a financial goal and then you need to reach that goal and then the next month you need to set an even bigger financial goal and you need to reach that goal and you essentially just have to keep one upping yourself every single month for all of eternity. And ok, I mean, I guess that can be helpful for some people. I personally don’t know anyone that, that feels helpful for, but that’s just not how I do things that is not how I use goals in my business. I used to buy into that. Don’t get me wrong. Like I literally used to try and do that and I get pressured with myself and I would like reach a goal, especially a financial goal because I was all I thought that goals were for a very long time in my business. But I get so frustrated because I had reach a goal and then I would try to, like the very next month, like double that goal and reach that goal. And then inevitably I’d get frustrated because why, like, why can’t I do it? You know, and I start getting in my head, I’m failing all of those things. Now, I do not use goals that way. I barely even like use financial goals, truth be told, especially, I rarely even use monthly financial goals. But of course, I had that as a monthly financial goal back in August or a one month financial goal back in August because I was like, I just want to get some momentum moving so I still do it. But for the most part, how I use goals is just frankly completely different to how I feel that at least I’ve seen a lot of people talking about goals in their business. So my very first invitation to though, by the way is like, can you tell me how you use goals in your business? Can you go to the big hearted entrepreneurs, Facebook group and put your post in there? I really want to hear how do you use goals? And I know, I don’t know, is that cheesy of me to ask, but I just don’t see this conversation happening really much of anywhere in the online business space except for using goals in relation to creating more money every single month. So if you have a different way, come into the group, tell me about it, please. I wanna hear, I want to have that conversation. My second invitation to you is as I talk through like how I use goals, why I use goals when I use goals and all of that my invitation to you is to really start to consider for yourself. How do you want to use goals? Why do you want to use goals? When do you want to use goals in your business? And there’s really not like a one size fits all approach to goal setting and to using goals as a tool in our businesses. And so, you know, I think again, it’s really easy to just start like taking on someone else’s way of goal setting or taking on someone else’s even like reasons for why they use goals. But is that actually aligned with you? Well, if we don’t actually start asking the question, we won’t know. So anyway, here we go. Why do I set goals? Literally? Like the actual only reason that I set goals is because they give me focus and direction. I find that. And actually what inspired me to have this conversation here is that today? I was like, huh, it’s like, I don’t know, what is it? I think it’s October 9 Yep. I just looked at my phone. It’s October 9 while I am recording this. And I’m like, I have not set a goal this month and I’m kind of feeling like I’m just, like, wandering aimlessly. Huh? I wonder if there’s a connection there. And so when I set goals it’s almost always because it feels like I need some more focus or I need to really be clear on what I am working toward. I don’t know about you, but it’s so easy for me to have just like this to do list that is a million miles long. And then I’m like, oh, I need to do that and I need to do that and I need to do that and I need to do that. And when I am in a place that is like that, it’s really then hard to make any forward progress anywhere because I don’t actually really know what I’m working toward and all of these projects are all of these things that I need to get done. It kind of is easy to start losing sight of why I’m doing any of them. It’s like, yeah, ok, you know, doing this one thing here is going to eventually help my business, but it just starts to feel like it’s lacking purpose because it feels like I’m not using that specifically to work toward something. It’s just this kind of like floating cloud of, well, I need to do that because it’s going to help like it doesn’t feel tangible and I don’t know, am I alone in wanting something tangible and wanting to feel like I truly am working towards something? I don’t think so, but maybe I’m, I am, you know, that’s fine. So having a goal helps me have focus, helps me stay on task and keep moving in an intentional direction when I don’t have that goal. Oh man. Like I kind of just again, feel like I’m wandering aimlessly, feel like I’m doing nothing of any value. Feel like I start and stop a bunch of projects because I just, I’m like, well, I wanna do this today. I wanna do that today. I wanna whatever and nothing really then feels like it’s actually moving forward. And for me anyway, if I don’t feel like I’m making progress forward, then my brain kind of starts feeling like, ah, why am I doing anything? I don’t want to do that and I get a little bit lazy now, laziness is not a bad thing, of course, but I mean, lazy in terms of just not actually committing to anything and therefore not following through on anything. And then I don’t actually do any of the things that I am trying to do, which obviously doesn’t work. The thing that I want to bring here, I just like the nuance that I want to bring here though is that I do not set goals as a way to define success. Here’s what I mean by that. Actually, I’m going to say it again because this is important. I do not set goals as a way to define success. What I mean is that when I set a goal, I am not looking at that goal and telling myself if I don’t reach it, then I am a failure. Or if I do reach it, then I am a success. My goals and whether or not I reach them has no bearing on who I am as a person. My goals and whether or not I reach them, have no bearing on how I view myself. Now. My ability to say that here today is like mind blowing to me because that was not true. A couple of years ago, a couple years ago, if I reached a goal, then I started to hold an identity of I am successful. If I didn’t reach a goal, I would hold an identity of I am a failure. That is not helpful. I’m just wrapping up uh coaching middle school girls volleyball right now actually. And we literally talk all the time about like it’s not about the win, you know, the we’re not trying to win the game. That’s awesome. Let’s have that as the direction. Sure, that can be the goal. But success is not defined by winning the game. Success is defined by playing our best today in this moment. If we do that, we are successful and I I carry that through every area of my life as much as I can. Of course, maybe I have some blind spots that I can find and work on. But I carry that even in my business of, if I set a goal, it has no bearing on who I am on whether I am successful on whether I am a failure on whether I am whatever it has no bearing. So the goal again, for me, my pure intention for setting goals is it gives me something to move toward. It gives me a focus. It gives me a direction. And actually I’ll talk about here in a little bit how I do define success. But even then I’m not defining success based off of like I am successful or I am a failure. I’m defining success based off of was my effort here successful was what I did successful. I’ll get into that nuance in a little bit, I promise. So what types of goals do I set? Because again, it’s not actually all about money for me, first and foremost, I see it as kind of like there’s almost two categories. So I set annual goals. I set quarterly goals. I set monthly goals. Am I perfect at setting a annual goal at the beginning of every year. Nope, I’m not. Sometimes I’m like, oh, it’s July and I would like to set a goal. And so then I set a goal from July to July rather than like January to December quarterly goals. Do I sit down at the beginning or really at the end of every quarter and set a new quarterly goal? Not always and better at that one than I am with annual goals. And I do think that quarterly goals in some ways matter more than annual goals, but that’s a different conversation. So I’m not like super consistent with quarterly goals, but I’m definitely more consistent than I am with annual goals, monthly goals. Again, I don’t always set a monthly goal. But for the most part I do, of course, there are months where I’m like, like literally this month, October of 2023 when I am recording this. But I’m like, oh, yep, didn’t set a goal. That’s why I feel like I’m kind of just wandering around not really knowing what I’m doing. But for the most part, I am really on top of setting monthly goals because it just helps me have focus, it helps me have a direction and the important thing and you talk to anyone who teaches goal setting. The important thing with any monthly goal is that it’s working toward your bigger goals, right? You don’t want to just set a goal because it’s like, oh, well, I want to do that this month, but then actually achieving that isn’t going to ultimately move you in a direction that you would like to go. An example of that would be, yes, I set a financial goal in August. But then in September I was like, oh, well, I should set another financial goal. Like I just kind of, I guess, kind of reverted back to how I used to think about goal setting. So I set a financial goal for September and it was a bigger financial goal than my August 1. And I was like, ok, here we go. Here we go. Here we go. And my excitement about that goal lasted all of two or three days because I realized trying to now reach this next even bigger financial goal doesn’t actually align with what my long term goals are. The financial goal in August was great because it gave me a boost of momentum and it gave me like, you know, this excitement and rejuvenation feeling again, that was wonderful. But setting another financial goal in the very next month actually doesn’t help. It’s not moving me toward my ultimate goals. Because if I was going to try and reach an even bigger financial goal in September, then I actually would have had to do things that weren’t ultimately what I wanted to do. I would have had to probably like, take on a bunch of one on one clients or I would have had to run some sort of sale or some sort of like incentive or something like that. I would have maybe had to ask some of my current clients if they would be willing to pay their remaining balance upfront, maybe in exchange for a small discount. I would have just had to do quite a few things that weren’t actually moving me toward my ultimate goals weren’t actually going to serve me in the long run. So monthly goals again, I do set them but I very rarely have a monthly goal. That is a financial goal followed by another monthly goal. That is a financial goal. So kind of that brings me to what I see as the subcategories of annual, quarterly and monthly goals, which for me are kind of three things, one money goals. So I will maybe set a money, quarterly goal or a month. The annual goal or a money focused monthly goal, project goals are another kind of type of goal. So it’s like, you know, for example, in the last year, one of the annual goals has been a project goal, it’s get the rebrand finished, right? Like rebrand, the business launch the rebrand, like be able to start in that new kind of chapter of Hoo’s story. So project goals, the third type of goals that I will often set are personal goals. And what I mean by that, like, for example, one of my personal goals this year is to take December off. And so in order to reach that I have had to be really intentional about that throughout this whole year. It’s like I sign a one on one client and they’re going to have time, you know, their contract goes over the month of December. Well, I have to tell them up front. I’m not working in December, so here’s the workaround for this. Maybe we add an extra month on the end or we whatever, add another session in or whatever it is. So I have those personal kind of goals that are more about like, what do I actually want for myself? Another personal goal that I’ve been setting that relates to my business, but actually isn’t really part of the business is that I want to be doing more outside of my business, more fun things that I care about that I really enjoy outside of my business. So like ceramics, taking a ceramics class, like I love ceramics, I feel very at home on a wheel. And so a personal goal has been carly spend more time doing things that are not work related. Now, that kind of falls into what I would kind of classify as business goals for me because I know that I want to do those things partially so that I can actually be who I want to be as a leader, as a coach, as a boss, as all of these things, all of these roles that I play here at HCO. Now, here’s the thing, right? It’s like, OK, we have annual goals, we have quarterly goals, we have monthly goals and then kind of types of goals, money goals, project goals. Personal goals, the type of goal doesn’t actually matter. Right. I’m not over here, like, oh, I set a money goal first and then a project goal and then a personal goal or, you know, oh, I already set two money goals in the last few months. So now I have to set a project goal. I am very much someone who likes to be able to flow with, like, my inspiration a little bit more and do things that I’m like, oh yeah, I’m excited about that. And so how I determine what kind of goal I’m setting really comes down to? Is it something that I intrinsically care about reaching? I’m going to say that I got it. Is it something that I intrinsically care about reaching? Like I said with September, when I did say, oh, well, I reached my financial goal in August, maybe I should set another financial goal. I set that goal because I felt like I should set it not because I actually intrinsically cared about reaching it. But then we look at August, I set a financial goal there because I was really intrinsically motivated to reach that goal. And by the way, when I say intrinsically, it’s like I myself within who I am, am excited to do this and committed to doing this and you know, really on board for this rather than just being something like, oh, well, I reached this goal last month. So I should do this goal this month that doesn’t work for me, whatever my goal is, it has to be something that I actually truly intrinsically in who I am care about reaching. And you know, even beyond just setting that financial goal in September, like that’s something that I literally used to do all the time and I kind of already shared this, but I literally used to just always set financial goals because that’s what I thought that I should set. I used to always think like, you know, that I have to have a 10-K month, I have to have a 20 K month. I have to get to 30 K. Like I used to really base like everything that I was doing based around, I need to reach XYZ financial goal. But inevitably, I would often come to a point where I didn’t actually care about that financial goal. And so then I get really frustrated with myself like, oh Carly, why aren’t you committed? Why are you, you know, slacking off here? Like man, my self talk used to not be very nice. Let me tell you. So again, my kind of like marker of this is the right goal for me. Is, is it something that I actually intrinsically care about reaching? It brings me to my next point? You know, how do I actually keep momentum going toward my goals? Especially if it’s like, you know, even a monthly goal, I mean, 30 days staying committed to something for 30 days can be challenging. Right? Really staying focused on one thing for 30 days can be challenging. But even if it’s like a quarterly goal or an annual goal, like, how do I stay committed to that and keep my momentum going toward those things? Well, first and foremost, is that true goals, I’m actually excited about choose goals that actually intrinsically, I’m like, yes, I want to do that and it’s not just like a head based goal of, oh, well, I should do that or if I do that and that’s going to make me successful or whatever it is, it’s a purely head based goal where it’s something like I feel like I have to do or I should do, then it doesn’t work for me, I guess maybe it can work for you. But I also don’t think that that’s a sustainable way of setting goals. I think that goals truly have to come from deep within us and be something that we genuinely care about. But how else do I keep momentum toward my goals beyond it actually being something that I care about. First and foremost, I focus on taking steps rather than trying to arrive at a destination. You know, I host a monthly live goal setting and Q and A session for our expanders and a few other uh clients for other programs get to join as well. And so every month we go through a process of setting goals and it’s actually a very like somatic based process where you really feel into the goal. And we, you know, actually make sure that it’s something we’re excited about. But when I lead people through that process, I often say like, OK, we have the goal now, set the goal aside, the goal, basically just gives us the direction. But what actually matters is the steps. So what are the steps that you have to take to go from where you are to where you want to be? What are the steps you have to take to go from here today to actually achieving this goal? And so how do we keep momentum toward our goals? We stop putting so much weight on whether or not we are quote unquote there yet we start putting weight on. Am I taking the steps? Because when we are taking the steps and that’s what we’re actually like working toward, then it’s so much more likely that we’re actually going to be able to reach the goal or if we don’t reach the goal, then we still have taken the steps. And so we learned a lot about the process of attempting to reach that goal and then we can take those learnings and then use those to help us the next time we set a goal or the next time we try to work toward either that same goal or a different goal. So keeping momentum really is just about putting 1 ft in front of the other again, I’m gonna keep going back to volleyball because I literally am on a lunch break from a three day middle school girls volleyball tournament right now and I am recording this because I was inspired. So coming back to volleyball here as an analogy, you know, I often tell the girls, it’s about just one play any point in the game. All that matters is the current play. It’s so easy to start looking up at the score. Like, are we ahead? Am I winning? Are we on track? You know, it’s so easy to start making that the focus. But truly what actually matters in any volleyball game in any sport, in anything, what actually matters is that you are taking one step and then the next step and then the next step and then the next step and by taking all of those steps, you will get to where you want to go, but we have to take each individual step and it’s usually when we try to like, oh no, you know, we’re behind by five points like, oh my gosh, we’re gonna lose. That is the point that we then actually lose momentum and then we mess up and then we, you know, uh in business, then we start self sabotaging like those are the points in business, in volleyball, in whatever, where we take our eye off of the very next step that we then start to actually kind of fall off track and not be able to keep our momentum up. So how do we keep momentum toward goals? Literally just focus on steps. So where are you now? Where do you want to be, what are the steps you have to take to get there? And then while you are actually moving through that month or moving through that quarter or whatever kind of timeline you’ve set for your goal, focus on what’s the next step? OK. What’s the next step? All right. Now, what’s the next step? And just keep going another way that I keep momentum going toward my goals. And again, this might just be a personal preference because I like to have something very tangible. When I have a goal, I like to have a visual cue. So as I mentioned in August, I kind of like drew myself this little thermometer, kind of little very basic drawing that had at the very top my financial goal for August and every single time that I would have a new payment come in or whatever it was, I would take my markers. I had the paper with the thermometer on it and I had my markers right next to my computer the entire month. And anytime something would come in, I would write it in right then and there. So I could literally start to see the money stacking up and moving toward my goal. My big goal there, that kind of visual cue is so powerful for me. Like I cannot overstate its importance because without it, I just, I’m a little bit of an out of sight, out of mind kind of person. If it’s not there, then I kind of forget about it and it is what it is or I remember, right? But then it’s just like sitting in my brain and then I go through this whole process where it’s like stuck there and then I get have a really hard time doing anything because then I’m like, oh no, like, you know, I don’t know. Am I weird? Maybe that’s fine. I’m OK being weird, but a visual cue is very, very, very helpful for me. Another way that I really keep momentum going to my goals. And again, this is even something that we have kind of a whole process for in our monthly Q and A sessions, goal setting and Q and A sessions for our expanders is that I prepare in advance for speed bumps and obstacles. We kind of like have to look at life and recognize that there’s gonna be things that come up, things come up throughout the month, things come up throughout the year. Like it actually would be very weird if we have set a goal and had zero obstacles come up in the process. So it’s very normal to have obstacles, to have things come up that then kind of become a little bit of a speed bump or kind of knock us off track or whatever it is. And so we can prepare in advance for what we are going to do when those things happen because we know that they’re going to happen, we can expect them to happen. So what do we do when they happen if we literally set our goal and then start by actually preparing for those things? Like starting to plan? Like, yeah, if I got sick, how would that change things? What would I do if I just had a little bit of an off day? Like how would that change things? What would I do if my kid needed to stay home from school one day? I don’t have kids, but I’m using a client example here. Like what would I do? We get to really prepare in advance for the speed bumps, for the obstacles we even get to prepare in advance for. I know that if I am really intentionally working toward a financial goal, there’s going to be a couple days where I start being like, nothing is working. Why am am I not bringing sales in so I can prepare in advance for what I am going to do when those things happen? Those things that like the obstacles, those speed bumps literally mean nothing about our ability to reach our goal. It’s not like some sign from the universe of like, oh you can’t do it. It literally is just this is how life works, things come up. So let’s actually set ourselves up for success. Let’s create the conditions within which we can succeed by preparing for speed bumps, by preparing for obstacles. This next one is something that I have actually just recently started doing in probably the last six months. And this to me feels like such a huge marker of my growth. And it’s something I’m really proud of myself for. And that is that when I notice that my energy around a goal is kind of like lagging or I notice like, oh, I don’t know, I don’t really feel like going toward that or, oh, I don’t know if I’m gonna make it like any time that I have that sort of stepping back from the goal and feeling like it’s, oh, it’s probably not gonna happen or it might not happen or I don’t know anytime I have that I just recommit to the goal. No, this is like mind blowingly simple. But I’m telling you, it took me 4.5 years of being in business to learn this, having an off day or having my energy lag around a goal does not mean that I’m not committed to the goal or that I’m not capable of reaching the goal or that it’s, you know, too much or it’s not gonna happen, like literally lagging energy is normal. It’s one of those speed bumps. It’s one of those obstacles that we talked about and so all you have to do is just say, ok, hey, I’m recommitting to the goal that I set. Now there were a few times back in August where? Yeah, I was like, oh, I don’t know if this is gonna happen or, uh, man, I’m just so tired. I don’t know if I really want to keep going with this and I get to look at that and I got to just kind of be like, ok, hey, that’s totally valid. I hear you Carly, you know, like, thank you for, for telling me that and I’m gonna recommit to the goal. I’m going to look back at, you know, why did I set this goal in the first place? Did I know I was capable when I first set it? Yeah. OK, great. I’m just going to recommit and there were points where, you know, it was like a few days in a row. I would be like, oh man, I don’t know if it’s going to work and then I just would be like, OK, I’m recommitting and then even a few hours later, oh I don’t know if I was like, OK, I’m recommitting next day. I don’t know if it’s going to work. Ok. Recommitting every single moment is a new opportunity to recommit to the goal. It’s not like if you lose momentum for one moment that, you know, now it’s all fucked. It’s just like, no, you just get to recommit, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve set a goal and I had a moment where I started to feel like it wasn’t possible or where I felt like, oh, I don’t know. Or, you know, I started to feel like I didn’t have momentum or things weren’t working and then I just let that basically kind of be a sign of sorts that it wasn’t going to work. There’s just so many moments where I had a goal that I probably could have reached, but I just didn’t keep going for it because I just kind of took my lagging energy or my, you know, lack of bully or something like that as a sign that it wasn’t gonna work. No, all of those things are valid. You’re allowed to have lagging energy again, it’s completely normal, you’re allowed to have days where you have doubts and things totally normal and you also just get to recommit, recommit to the goal. I cannot tell you how much that helped back in August. The final way that I keep momentum toward my goals is really by bringing my whole body into it. And this is something, you know, that kind of goes back to what I was saying with me. I have to actually intrinsically care about reaching the goal, but it even goes beyond that. You know, like when I host the monthly goal setting and live Q and A sessions for expanders, we actually bring somatics or like bring our bodies into the process. You know, when they first write out what their goal is, we actually then notice what sensations are coming up in their body and we just ask them to stay with those sensations and describe those sensations. What do they feel like? What do they look like? You know, really, really, really notice them and then from there, you know, if that sensation could talk, what might it say? Like we actually listen to the things that are coming up in our bodies while we are moving through the process of setting goals. And then, you know, for myself, especially, of course, like as I move through my month or move through the quarter or whatever it is that I’m moving toward, I’m always checking in with my body. Not always, I am consistently checking in with my body looking at like, how do I feel what is coming up? Like, what might that be trying to tell me? What might that be trying to communicate with me about? I’m always bringing my body into the process with me that helps me keep that momentum. Because, you know, for example, in a recent goal setting session that I ran with our expander, one person was kind of talking about how they had like knots in their stomach and the knots in their stomach were like, no, don’t do that. You know, like the knots in their stomach were really terrified of trying to move toward that goal and it’s totally OK. And here’s the thing by paying attention to the knots in the stomach and by actually letting them speak, then this person was able to then choose, ok. Do I want to still set this goal or do I want to set a different goal? And here’s the thing with that, there isn’t a wrong answer. It could be that you set a goal and then you check in with your body. You have some of that angst come up inside of you, some fear come up inside of you. And you could say, you know what I feel like, maybe this goal is actually truly outside of my reach. It feels a little too much like a strain rather than a stretch. And so I’m going to tone my goal back. But you could also say, you know what, after checking out of my body and really like listening to and working with that fear that was coming up, I’ve decided I want to stick with this goal and I’m going to keep checking in with that fear voice throughout this whole month or this whole quarter or whatever it is to really just continue building that relationship. So that that fear knows that I hear it, but it doesn’t have to show up in self sabotaging ways. So really bringing our whole selves into any sort of goal setting process, but also then like goal achieving journey, bringing our whole bodies our whole selves, allowing our whole human to be part of that process is so powerful at supporting us to then keep that momentum toward our goals. The final thing I want to talk about is, you know, what do I do when I don’t reach the goal? How do I deal? Right? Like how do I react to respond? Like, move forward if I do set a goal and I don’t reach it first and foremost, as we were to touch about my success and subsequently my own worth as a human being is not determined by whether or not I reach a goal. My success is not determined by whether or not I reach a goal, how I define success when I am setting goals and then working toward them is did I take the steps that I said I was going to take? And even with that, I say it with a caveat? So yes, did I take the steps that I said I was going to take? And did I pivot if I was taking those steps and realized that actually that one of those steps or some of those steps weren’t aligned? That is how I measure my success in relation to a goal. But even then I don’t see that success as having any bearing on who I am as a person. And again, that is hard earned. That is something that I have been working on for years at this point in business to be able to say that my success or my failures even don’t have a bearing on who I am as a human being that has taken a lot of practice and it has taken a lot of work with success and with failure to be able to then recognize that success or failure are things outside of me. But who I am is me. And there’s nothing that can touch that. There’s nothing that can define or redefine my worth, my value, you know, my person, successes and failures. Yeah, they’re a thing but they don’t define who I am. And so because of that, if I don’t hit a goal, to be honest with you, like it’s fine if I don’t hit a goal, I’m like, ok, well on to the next one that’s not always been true. Of course, it definitely, you know, used to really kind of like eat me up a little bit inside and I’m sure that there might be things that I even go for in the future that feel a little stretchy or whatever it is. And if I don’t reach the goal, I’m sure I, I will eventually like find another moment to work with some of these things on a deeper level. So that might not always be the case that a failure or a success don’t define how I feel about myself. But for the most part, if I don’t reach a goal, I’m like, ok, great. Well on to the next thing and not even on to the next thing of like, I’m not paying attention to that, but really on to the next thing with like a hard earned knowledge now and hard earned experience. Now with me that I’m carrying forward into setting whatever the next goal is or working toward whatever the next thing is, the way I view business is like a long game or like a marathon or just honestly, I just really view business as a never ending journey with no destination, with no end point. Because as far as I’m, you know, see from my current viewpoint, I don’t have plans of stopping being in business. I have ideas of what things might look like 50 years from now, but I’m not also sitting here like, oh things have to look like that from then. I don’t fully know, you know, so for me, business is just an ongoing journey. And so if that’s true that I’m able to take any quote unquote failure, any not reaching my goals as something that is contextualized by something much larger, right? You know, when you stand, when you’ve done a hike and it’s like a really intense hike and you get to the top and there’s this clearing and you just see this beautiful horizon in front of you, you feel really small, right? And so if we view business as this never ending journey, there isn’t a destination, it just does this kind of big amorphous thing than a failure just feels really small in the context of how big the rest of everything else is. A failure is just one tiny little step in this entire never ending journey. And with that, then, you know, when we actually relegate kind of failure to its correct position and to its correct size because a lot of times as I’m sure, you know, failure can feel like this like looming and huge thing that is just like all encompassing and it takes us over. But when we actually look at how big failure is and especially just one failure, how big is one failure in relation to our entire journey of business? We see how small it is and then it’s so much easier to then actually look at it with eyes that are ready to learn with eyes that are ready to like see the value in it. You know, what progress did I make in this journey? What did I learn from this journey from this failure that I want to carry forward? What would I like to leave behind from this journey? We get to then look at and learn from this thing that just happened or didn’t happen. We had to look at it and we get to choose what we want to actually like take from it and glean from it because it’s not this like huge defining thing. It just is literally one normal part of the entire, very huge, very long, no end in sight journey. The other thing that I do if I don’t reach my goal is honestly, I just like, remind myself like I’m gonna reach it eventually. Honestly, just like those words themselves have been so powerful in my time in business, being able to say, ah, it’s fine. I’m gonna reach it eventually. I think about three years in a row. Now I’ve decided this is gonna be my million dollar a year. And man, I look back to three years ago and I’m like, wow, so naive Carly. And that’s ok. You know, it’s totally ok. Um, but I was nowhere near ready for a million dollar a year. Three years ago. Oh, my word. Like, what was I even thinking? So then I obviously didn’t reach it, you know, three years ago. So, two years ago. Ok, it’s gonna be my million dollar year. No, I didn’t reach it. That’s ok this year, you know, back in December of 2022. So, thinking about 2023 I was like, ok, this is gonna be a million dollar year. Well, I had another thing come in there because no, this was not my million dollar a year and that’s ok. But you know what the beauty is, one that I just know I’m going to eventually have a million dollar a year. So that’s fine. And I’m not, like, over here, like, oh, I didn’t have a million dollar a year this year. So that means I’m never gonna have a million dollar a year. It’s just like, no, I’m able to look back and say, here’s what I’ve learned. Here’s what I’ve gleaned. Here’s what I want to carry forward. Here’s what I want to leave behind. And then now, actually, and, you know, here’s a fun one. We’ll see if this actually works, but I truly am in a place of, oh, I see why I didn’t reach a million dollar a year in all of these past three years. But I also see how, because of that, I actually am ready to have a million dollar year. Now. We’ll see if that happens. Right. We’ll see. I’m not over here like, oh my gosh, this has to be my million dollar year next. But because I’ve had that goal for a while and I’ve just like, held on to it and I know I’m going to reach it eventually. There’s not that pressure to it. And I can therefore look at it with very, just like open eyes of like, wow. No, I actually, I thought I was ready before but I actually see how I wasn’t now, but now I am and now I know what has to happen because of all of the like, quote unquote failures. I guess you could say the truth, be told. None of the last three years of my business, feel like failures. I’m very proud of them. But because of those quote unquote failures, I now know that I can stand here with confidence and be like, oh, I actually am ready for a million dollar a year now. So, yeah, is that gonna be my goal? Sure. Let’s go for it. You know, I’m so ready. But also if I don’t reach it again, hey, I also have enough like, knowledge now and experience to be able to say, well, if I don’t reach it this time, guess what, I’ll reach it the next time. And that is totally OK. So, I mean, I could keep talking about this and I love doing our monthly goal setting and Q and A sessions for our expanders every single month. I just, I’m obsessed with them. It’s really cool to see like the patterns that arise and the growth that happens month to month to month for people that join us for those sessions because they go through a lot of these same learnings right there. And then we have a lot of these conversations every single month and then they’re able to kind of go back through the exact same process that we use to set like body based goals every single month and you know, able to then figure out what are the steps that they need to take and how can they prepare, what is the plan, you know, all of those things they’re able to do all of those things right then and there every single month. That’s such a treat. But my invitation to you here is to just pause for a moment if you can, if you’re up for it and ask yourself what is the goal that I’m working toward right now? And maybe, you know, right off the top of your head if you do. Awesome. And you don’t know. That’s totally ok. You know, maybe it’s time to think about it. Yeah. What is my goal? What am I focusing on? Doesn’t that again? Have to be a money goal. It can be something like, you know, my goal right now for October is like, finish the rebrand, get everything in place to be able to release our new website, all of that. But basically, what is the goal you’re working toward right now and then even more importantly, and I say this again in our Q and A and goal setting sessions every single month, but more important than even what the goal is because that just provides us the direction. What steps do you need to take or are you taking to reach that goal? I would be so honored if you’d come join me inside the big hearted entrepreneur, Facebook group and tell me, you know, what is the goal that you’re working toward and also what steps are you taking to reach it?
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[Podcast Outro]
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