What’s In Your Toolbox?

We are live. Signature piece move Kondre. It feels like it's been forever. I was thinking about that as I was washing my hair today. I was like, it's been a hot second. Cause the last time you saw me was a while ago. Cause you did that live. I did a live by myself. But we've been in a different time zone. And I don't mean like eastern, western. I mean camp time. Camp time with. I mean, we've had 65 little pumpkins who are the ages of ten to 13 come through our camp over the two weeks that we've had camp.

And if you think about it, ten days really isn't a long time. But it is. It really when you are the purveyor of the whole situation and you're the camp counselor, and you're the camp janitor, and you're the camp nurse, and you're the camp instructor, and we're dealing with parents, and there's a lot that goes into hosting a summer camp. We're also in charge of all the volunteers. And, man, we've had a slew of volunteers come through, so it feels like it's been forever. Thank you for your warm welcome back.

We're so excited to be here. Luke, you're here with us, and your toolbox is about to be filled up because as you well know, this is Tuesday. And on Tuesdays, we talk about the tools in our toolbox. And we're really excited for today's conversation. So if you're joining us for the first time, welcome. My name is Jill. This is Mary. We are besties and business partners. We own a company called Girls Mentorship, where we teach life and personal development skills to teen and tween girls. And today, one of our favorite tools that we are bringing to you is all around goal setting.

Goals. Goals. Goals. And goals are interesting for this age range. And realistically, what Jill just said about teaching teen and tween girls life and personal development skills, we have noticed. We have noticed, notice, noticed that sometimes they lack skills because their parents lack skills. And it helps us to help the girl to have these conversations directly with the adults in their life so they can take stock of where they're setting as well. So, goals. How many of you, by show of hands, have heard of the term smart goals?

Smart? It is an acronym. It doesn't mean that you are smart or stupid. It is an acronym for this goal setting framework. Specific. The m measurable, the a attainable, the r realistic, and the t timely. On the spot. That was great. I appreciate that. Cause I didn't know a few of those right off the top of my head, and I didn't know them because I actually, Jill and I haven't used the smart goal framework in years. The goal setting that we try to do with our girls, whether it's via workshop, whether it's via camp, is really focusing on who.

Who they are, not what they're doing. So we call it who goals versus do goals. And smart goals for us, really precipitates the doing part of it. What is the thing that you are trying to achieve and nothing else matters? You get to that goal. You get to that goal as fast as you can, and nothing else literally matters. So, what is the goal? I want to earn $10,000 by the end of June. Boom. I'm specific. Is it measurable? Yes. I had 30 days to do it. Is it attainable? Absolutely. If I work my tail off.

Is it realistic? That's the one that really, really gets me realistic, because who the h*** on this app in this world is honestly trying to be realistic in their goals? In their goals. Because if you're trying to be realistic, it means that you could probably do it very easily. We want to be as unrealistic with our goal setting as possible, so we learn to shoot far beyond what we think we're actually capable of. Yeah. When we say realistic, and you're putting goals out there that you can just check off.

Boop. Like that, that is called looking good goals. Like, I have all of these goals, and if I do them realistically, I can check it off. And to me, that equals success. So we challenge. We challenge ourselves, we challenge the girls that we work with, and we're gonna challenge you around, dreaming bigger and shooting for the stars and not having them be timely. They don't have to have an end date, because what happens if you don't get it? If you don't get there, you don't achieve it. Then it makes you feel a certain way, usually less than and just a funny.

Who here also puts things on their to do list just to cross them off that they've already done, like that. That's such a thing to feel, like, accomplished in our goal setting. And that's what we've seen with goal setting in the smart framework fashion and with what Jill just said, there's three things that we've noticed that when you set a goal a, that happened. When you set a goal a, you miss it, you don't hit it, and then you feel less than or like you, the person that is you is a failure. That's not at all how we should feel.

Because we garnered certain characteristics and personality traits along the way, right? You were perseverant. You showed grit. You showed determination. Just because you didn't hit the goal doesn't mean that you are not any of the those things along the way. Right? That second thing is a goal hangover. So let's say you ran as hard as you possibly could towards that goal, and you hit it the next day. You feel like absolute dog s*** because you feel like that you peaked. That was the pinnacle of your life.

And you're now questioning, now what? Now what? I reached the thing that I was going so hard for. That's it. That's it for me. There's nothing else. And then you become complacent. The complacency. Then there's a third one. The third one is hitting the goal and running so far past it without even acknowledging that you put time and effort into achieving something so great. None of those three things are how we actually want to feel when we achieve goals. So we put our own little spin on it based on the work that we do.

We flipped it from smart goals to focus. Goals focus. And we want to run through what each letter stands for so that you can start practicing your goal setting through this framework. The f. The f. The f stands for free. How do we free ourselves from the expectations of both ourself and others? And to give an example of that, Jill and I are new business owners. We're heading into year three of this baby business, and it feels like we've been doing it forever. However, we've only been in it for a very short time.

So, of course, we have expectations of ourselves that get thrown right out the frickin window because we change our mind so many times within the first five years of a business. We don't know how our audience is going to respond. We don't know buying habits, things like that. So we have to adapt really quickly to certain behaviors and statistics, analytics that are showing up in our business. So let's put our expectations aside, as well as other people's expectations of us. You should be here. You should be doing this.

You should serve this demographic or talk to these people. You should be a nonprofit. When we are a for profit business, everyone has their say in our business, and it's a reminder for us around who's in the arena with us versus the people who are in the bleachers. Luke, we know you love that. That's one of your favorite, is it a poem? Is it? It's a speech. A speech by Roosevelt. Yes. Man in the arena. Man in the arena. So let's move on to the o. What's the o? O is outside of the box. And what do we mean by this?

It's doing consistently what the average person does occasionally. Doing consistently what the average person does occasionally. Right. It's setting smart goals, things that are realistic, things that are easily achievable. Of course, I want to set markers that I'll hit easily because I don't have to get outside of my comfort zone, outside of the box, in order to achieve those things. Right? And see, this is one of our favorites. C stands for character. So competency gets you in the room, but character is what keeps you in the room.

It keeps you there. It does. So I can have a conversation with somebody who I know is going to be able to connect me with who I need to be connected with. Right? My competency allowed me to have that conversation and make that connection. But my character, how did I treat that connection after? Was I thankful for it? Did I send out a little note of gratitude afterwards so that person knew that they could feed me other connections in the future? Or did I expect it to happen and totally breeze by the gesture?

Because when you do things like that, people notice, they start to associate that with your overall character, and that's not what you want. Something that we tell the girls a lot, too, is that you are a thermostat. So depending on a room that you go in and you feel. Feel. Maybe the energy's off, but you're the light, you're the energy. You can set the temperature in the room and allow other people to match it, or you can drop to the temperature in the room. Who are you when you walk into those rooms, as opposed to the feeling of uneasiness or overwhelm to totally dim your light, it's just noticing and being like, you know what?

That's not who I am. And I'm going to show up as my biggest, best, most authentic self in a space like this. And you know what? That leads to the you in focus, you is uncomfortable. Can it be uncomfortable to set the temperature in the room rather than adjust to the temperature that's already been set 1000%? One of our favorite quotes is by the prophet Mark Twain. He said, the two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why. And if you are anything like the two of us, you're constantly seeking purpose in your life.

You are looking for the why you are here, what you are supposed to do and how you are giving back. And in seeking your purpose, that journey can be very uncomfortable. And honestly, you can choose either way. You can be inside the box, which is comfortable and realistic and timely and measurable, or you can step outside the box and get uncomfortable in the pursuit of greatness. Right? And we always say, too, that some of the best ideas die in the graveyard because people spend their whole life doing what other people have told them to do or be.

And imagine if you can start living for you and going after your big goals, your big dreams, regardless of where you are, where you are right now, is going to teach you what's gonna be next in your journey. Last but not least, we have the s. And the s stands for steadfast. Be firm in your purpose and have a little bit of faith. Who said it? Have a little faith. Prophet George Michael Faith, oh, yeah, gotta have faith. Faith. Have a little faith in the fact that it's going to work out. Release some of the control you have.

Release some of the expectations you have around the end product. Because realistically, it's not about getting to the end, it's about the journey along the way. Oh, that is so, so good. So focus. We're switching our smart goal framework to focus. We're freeing ourselves from expectations of ourself and others. We're thinking outside of the box. We're developing our character. We're getting uncomfortable. And finally, have faith you're going to be steadfast in the process. So please take this framework if you feel like it fits more of who you are and where you are in your life right now.

We're not saying totally get rid of smart goals if they have served you. Amazing. I love that for you. We just found that it put us too much inside that box and it was unrealistic to be so realistic in that way. So take it. Serve it. Serve. Have it serve you. We'll make sure to put this in the community feed for everyone to see. And we are so excited to hear some stories about how implementing this in your life changes your focus. Yee ha. I can't wait to hear what goals you guys are working on. Absolutely.

Like the people on this app, we are. We're the change makers. We're the dreamers, we're the doers. So I'm excited. We're excited to hear more about the things that light you up. And you guys, that's it until next Tuesday. Have a fantastic rest of your week. Catch more people doing awesome lives this week. Interact with us on the community feed and we will see you then. Bye. See ya.