When Achiever Isn't Your #1 Strength

Hey, Cadre, family doctor Carrie here. Today I'm going to talk about goal setting and those two words might be really scary to you, but I'm hopefully going to unpack it a little bit for you in a series of videos here. So first I want to tell you about a recent experience I had with goal setting. I was challenged to set goals in a class that I was in. It was like a business entrepreneur class and this was not a scary task for me one bit. We took the strength finders test in this class and I have achiever as my number one strength.

So when I set a goal, I achieve it. In fact, I don't set goals that I know I can't achieve. And that doesn't mean I set always easy goals. But I definitely don't stretch my goals into something I might not be able to achieve because if I put it down as a goal, I will achieve it at any cost. And I understand that is not the same for everybody. I have a couple of friends who really struggle with goal setting and that's okay because you don't probably have achiever as your number one strength and that's totally great.

But I wanted to explain to you the process of how I set goals because it maybe will help you if you do struggle with goal setting. So in this recent experience, I had to set a goal and I break my goals down. So I had to picture myself, where do I want myself in ten years? What do I want my life to look like? Map it out, write it down, every little detail of things that you want in ten years. You know, shoot for the moon. It's ten years from now. A lot can happen in a day, much less ten years. So start with ten years, then break that down and say, okay, so that's where I want to be in ten years.

Where do I want to be in five years? What of that list seems doable in five years and then make that list, then break it down to like two or three years. Do this again with one year and then break it down even further. This is where a lot of people struggle. They can think really futuristic and make these huge, lofty goals, but not really understand how to get to those goals. So they're like, sure, I'll make my New Year's resolution and I'll make my goals for 2022, but they will struggle with how to actually do the steps to get to that one year goal.

So break it down into quarters at this point. What are your twelve week goals? What do you want to accomplish in twelve weeks? Keeping in mind what you wrote down for ten years. If you're saying I want to be a multimillionaire in ten years, well then what do you need to do to scale your business in the next twelve weeks that's going to get you to that step? So I always feel like it's helpful for people when they start really far out because people often can dream, but they have more trouble with the granular steps of setting a goal.

So once you've gotten down to the twelve week goals, you don't have to do what I did. What I did was literally made every week goals. At that point I broke it down even more. That's just how my brain works. I make actionable steps. But if that does help you, I would encourage you to try that. Because if twelve weeks even seems like a long time and you're like, I don't know what I can achieve in three months, then what can I achieve in three weeks or four weeks? What can I achieve in a month? And make a list of those things.

Okay, so if my goal in twelve weeks is to be ten pounds lighter than I am right now, all right, that's a great goal. Then what do I need to do in those twelve weeks? Well, I need to go to the gym. I need to drink more water. I need to cut out my chocolate cravings. I need to probably avoid alcohol, you know, things like that. So make that list of things that you need to do in the next twelve weeks. But then if it helps you, I recommend breaking it down like I did. What do I need to do this week?

If I am not somebody who goes to the gym and I expect in twelve weeks that I'm going to be going to the gym every day? Don't start going to the gym every day this week. That's, that's not realistic. If you're just not in the groove of going to the gym, you've got that gym membership you haven't been in three years. Don't start going daily because you burn out really easily when you start a goal like that. So build it up. Say, okay, this week I'm going to go to the gym one day and I'm going to go for a walk around the block another day and I'm going to increase my water intake by drinking one more eight ounce glass of water this week.

And I'm going to decide one night not to have ice cream because I normally have it every night. Something like that. Week two. All right, week two. I gotta up it a little bit now. I've gotten used to going to the gym once. Maybe I still can only go to the gym once, but I'm gonna do two walks outside and I'm gonna increase my water intake again. Make these small, incremental steps that help you to achieve that twelve week goal. And it might even be something as simple as, I don't think I'm ever gonna make seven days a week at the gym.

Okay, well, be realistic with yourself then. If you can only make five days in twelve weeks, that's okay. But the point of it is to give it a shot and see what can I accomplish in twelve weeks? What can I really change? They say that to develop a habit, it takes 21 days. I would actually argue it takes six weeks because when I did this with some of my goals, which were spiritual growth and business goals, some of these I struggled with for three weeks straight. Once I got into the fourth week and the fifth week, I was starting to kind of get in the groove.

I would say it probably takes about six weeks to really make a lifestyle change. So I would encourage you to do this. If you've got goals on your mind, break them down into little tiny steps. That's exactly what you're doing is you're saying, what are the manageable step for me to do this week that I can check off? I love checking off lists. I love it. It just like brings me joy. So I've got lists for goals that I can check off. I even write down something I literally just finished doing so that I can check it off.

I'm one of those people because it is that of accomplishment. And then if you want to go even further with this, you can do what I struggle with, which is setting a consequence and a reward. Now, when we did this for this class that I was in, I'm not somebody who needs a consequence or a reward, because if I don't achieve my goal, then I have more of this fear of failure issue come up for me, and I just don't not achieve my goals. And I know that might annoy you if you're not one of those people.

But sending a consequence and a reward is really good motivation innovator and make it something meaningful to you, just like you would do if you're training your kids to do something you know you like, you're potty training your kids. Here's an m and M. You want potty on the potty. Like there's a. There's needs to be a reward for meeting your goals. It's also going to incentivize you and keep you focused. So if you want to, like, I did buy yourself a new purse, I had the money to buy myself a new purse, but I also didn't really need a new purse.

So for me, that was a good reward that I get to go buy myself something. And it's not tied to food. It's not tied to any kind of, like, reward that's then gonna, like, be detrimental to the progress I've made if my goal was weight loss or something like that. So also make sure that your consequence and your reward are independent of your actual thing that you're striving for and not necessarily, like, independent of it. Like, if you're trying to reach a business goal and sell more, sure, treat yourself financially, but just make sure that whatever your reward is, that it's not going to be detrimental to the progress you've made as well.

And then make your consequence pretty serious. Like, don't make a consequence of, like, oh, I can't get a Starbucks one day this week. No, make it, like, I can't get Starbucks for a month. If that's, like, a serious deal for you, make that consequence. Make it hurt. Make something painful that you want to avoid that keeps you motivated. Because what a lot of people really struggle with is that motivation to keep going. Put a picture up of your goal. Write these down. I highly encourage you to have visuals for your goals.

Put them on your mirror. I literally made a printed out table and put it in my bedroom that I saw every single day I woke up and went back to bed because I could see the table and I could see if I checked things off or not. So I hope this is helpful for at least someone out there who maybe struggles with the motivation and goal setting to just break it down into super simple steps. Another last tip I have for you guys is to make a list of things you need to stop doing. And like, let's say your goal is weight loss and you have this habit of every Friday afternoon you go out and you buy yourself a special treat on your way home because there's this great little shop that sells these, like, amazing tacos or something.

If your goal is weight loss, make a list of the things you need to stop doing. And maybe it's the Friday taco stop that just needs to stop. And it's okay if you slip up. That's what giving yourself grace is for. But keep to that list, too, because there might be things as you do this reflection that you're like, wow, this thing I do is really keeping me from my twelve week goal, my one year goal, my five year goal. So make that list of things I need to stop doing, like right now. Maybe it's things that you speak over yourself.

I've done a couple of videos on what you say about yourself. Positive affirmations. Maybe there's things like that that you need to stop doing. So that would be my last tip for you, is make that list of things you need to stop doing, as well as the things you're going to start doing and let me know how this goes. I'm encouraged to see what kind of goals you guys make this year and how it goes for you. And I would love to know some ideas for your consequences and rewards. Share those, because those are super inspiring for other people, too.

So thanks for tuning in with me today. God bless.