In this episode, I’m looking ahead to 2023. I’ll share my process for setting intentions and goals, how to stick to them and create an overall plan for the new year.
Show Notes:
Welcome to Episode #109 of Real, Brave, & Unstoppable where I’m looking ahead to the new year – 2023!
This week on the podcast, I’m giving you a behind-the-scenes look at how I plan my year.
Last week, you learned how to reflect on lessons learned and identify areas for growth. This week, we’ll put it all together and learn how I set intentions and goals as well as other big milestones for the year.
Happy New Year!
Resources
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Other episodes:
- Ep 122: How to Take the High Road When People Say Mean Things About You
- Ep 121: 5 Ways to Make the Mirror Your Friend
- Ep 120: Getting Back on the Goals Bandwagon – Setting Better Goals
- Ep 119: Slow Down! How to Embrace Getting Still and Waiting Patiently
- How to Fix Your All-or-Nothing Thinking
The Real, Brave, & Unstoppable full episode catalog
Transcript:
Episode 109: Looking Ahead to 2023 – a Behind-the-Scenes Look at My Planning Process
Hello, and welcome back to real, brave, and unstoppable. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and upcoming happy new year. And whoa two weeks in a row. I put out an episode, so proud of myself. It’s an intention I have in the new year to really figure out how to balance my business with the job I have as a coach for a company. And speaking of that, I’m really loving my job in addition to working with my private clients as well. But it is challenging. In my private practice, I had a cap of working with 10, maybe 12 clients at a time… all of who were working on very similar things. And right now I have about 20 and I’m in the process of ramping up to a full caseload of 30 clients per week with extremely diverse reasons that they’ve come to coaching. I’ve been coaching on relationships, and breakups, communicating better confidence at work, figuring out what’s really important in life, parenting, and managing anxiety better. Balancing home and work. Managing stress. Self-compassion, and chilling out when you’re an overachiever, just to name a few things. So, this has really kind of pulled me out of my comfort zone because I was so used to just working with one type of client. But it’s also really opened my eyes to more of the day-to-day things that people struggle with and it’s helped me really look at the big picture of how my skillset as a coach fits into each type of issue. So that’s been kind of fun. When you have a niche in a business, you get kind of in a comfort zone. And so this has been a really amazing growth opportunity for me. That said I still have a private practice. So if overcoming something that feels challenging for you is something that you want to tackle in 2023, I am working with a handful of clients. So you can just go to my website, kortneyrivard.com, and contact me from there and we can chat about it. Speaking of 2023, today I’m talking about my process for setting intentions and goals for the new year. Of course, everyone jumps on this bandwagon about this time of the year, right? You know this is the year I’m finally going to… blank blank blank, insert yours here. And most people don’t follow through. They stay stuck, spinning their wheels and then the year passes and they look back frustrated at the lack of accomplishment. I’ve been there too. We all have, right? So, I’ve just decided to take a new approach, a different approach. A few years ago, I was introduced to Danielle LaPorte’s work, her book, the desire map, in particular. In the desire map, Danielle talks about how, at one point in her life, I’m keeping the story really short here, by the way, she realized that setting goals was really pointless if they didn’t make her feel good. And ultimately, the only reason we want to achieve something is that we think it will make us feel a certain way. Right? So she started approaching goal setting by considering her feelings first or how she wanted to feel. And knowing how you want to feel as something new to a lot of us. You know, we grow up being told not to be so emotional. Anger is frowned upon throwing a tantrum because we’re frustrated causes angst to those who are around us. You know, we get told here, have a cookie you’ll feel better. Don’t cry. Don’t be a crybaby. And for some showing emotion was considered a weakness or is considered a weakness. So it’s no wonder so many of us don’t have high emotional intelligence. So it can be difficult to answer the question, how do I want to feel when a lot of us, if we just ask the question, how do you feel that can be tricky? So, if this is new to you, there is an additional step that I recommend. Actually, a couple of additional steps, but it really it can be done in conjunction with desired feelings. The first one is to look at your values. What are your core values? Your core values are just a small handful of words that are really like life directions or desired ways of being that represent what’s truly important to us. Values, light your path in life and act like a compass, so you can always check in to see if something is aligned with what is most important to you in life. The other thing I would say also if you’re not somebody who has a lot of words for emotions, you can just Google the emotions wheel and you’ll find a lot of them, but it’s just a wheel that has emotions broken up into categories. I use it all the time for myself and with clients, it just really helps narrow in on what emotions you’re feeling. And if you get the book, the desire map, there’s also a lot of them in there as well. But getting back to values and knowing your values. A couple of examples: one of my values is simplicity. So for me, if I find something is getting overly complicated and honestly, I really tend to do this in my business sometimes. I know, it’s time to take a pause and ask myself some questions. Does it really need to be this complicated? How can I streamline? And maybe I’m getting too much in my brain about it. And I need to just kind of quiet myself and tune into my intuition. Another one of my values is authenticity, which is kind of like an umbrella value because there are a lot of values that can help you be authentic. But authenticity is the word that resonates with me. And one way that authenticity guides me is if I’m in a situation and I noticed that I have lots of like armor on. You know, I’m having a hard time showing up, as myself, I’m kind of guarded. It’s a signal to take a deep breath and trust that who I am is good enough to show up in any situation exactly as I am. Authenticity might also guide me in choosing how I want to show up in relationships, knowing what’s true for me and how I want to respond to someone. I can choose the way to show up or respond that’s in alignment with who I really am. So that’s helpful to know those things. I actually do a lot of work with clients on this, because believe it or not, it can be tricky to get to the real heart of the matter. And it often feels hard to choose fewer than five values, but you really only want a few because these are the things that are at your core, like most important to you. And most things will actually boil down to just a few core values and I help people get to the heart of their values by asking questions that facilitate kind of an excavation if you will. But when, you know, what’s really important to you in life, that sets the stage for the feelings part. Danielle LaPorte calls them core desired feelings. And the way I like to approach this is to look at my values first. So let’s take simplicity, for example. When things are simple and streamlined, I feel much more relaxed, peaceful, and free, just lighter. I have more headspace for things, other things. So I might feel clarity. So really doing some work on knowing how you want to feel is really like the first part. And we’re going to come back to that, but next, I want to talk about like the next part of my process before I set goals… is to look at my last year and get honest about where I want to grow. What speed bumps did I have and was I happy with how I handled them? What areas do I need to grow to improve upon those? So there I’m really just looking at mostly like, you know, just personal growth. And for me, I had a lot of instability in my relationship with my partner over the past year. Communication gets really emotional and isn’t very effective most of the time. And over the year, I made huge strides in how I show up to these potentially volatile conversations. And I got better at listening instead of waiting for a chance to, you know, get my 2 cents in. And, um, being less defensive, being more assertive in how I communicate taking the emotional drama out of it, and being just really clear in what I want and how I feel. And I’m not perfect in this at all, but I feel like I’ve made some good progress and I’m happy with that. and this would all touch on my value of authenticity a bit. Sometimes I pushed down my own needs and opinions because my partner doesn’t listen or just isn’t capable of seeing another point of view. I also get really triggered sometimes, so I get defensive. So I can look at those qualities and ask myself if I’m showing up authentically. And the answer is no when I’m doing those things. I’m someone who’s smart and ultimately in control of my emotions, which doesn’t mean shoving them down. It means I can be with them and not react uncontrollably. I’m not at the mercy of my emotions, in other words, I’m someone who has needs and opinions. And it’s important to me, it’s to be able to communicate my truth, even if it does make waves. It doesn’t mean that I’m only satisfied getting my way either. It refers to the way I show up to a conversation. Being clear, but it’s also authentic to me to listen and be compassionate. So it’s balancing the two. And I can see that there’s still a lot of room for growth in this area for me. So I might set a goal around communication. And from there, I can ask myself how I get there. Maybe it’s to practice being mindful, like mindful awareness. Or acceptance and self-compassion for my own emotions. And I can continue to suss out an actual goal from there. And bringing this back around to the feelings. And asking myself how I want to feel in this area. I want to feel connected. I want to feel authentic. I would also say, I want to feel love. Those are a few examples. And then as I go through my year, we’ll talk about like, you know, how to set milestones and check in on how you’re doing with it, but as I go through my year, I want to keep those feelings in mind. Like, is this goal, am I working towards feeling authentic and connected and feeling love? And is this, is this working? But that’s ultimately what’s driving me. So you can see the feelings and the values are just really important. Another example that isn’t my own, at least right now, because it might’ve been in the past. But a lot of times people set goals, they think are in alignment, but when they start to do the work, they’ve discovered that they really aren’t so much. And this shows up a lot in overachievers and perfectionists. I’ve totally been there and done that. So one thing I see long-time overachievers do is set a lot of really big goals that are lofty and impressive. And let’s be clear, there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing with lofty and impressive goals. But the reasons that they’ve set them are not in alignment with who they are, or how they want to feel. Usually, they’re chasing those goals because of the feeling they get from external validation or approval they get from the outside. But then when they do the work of looking at how they feel as they work toward that goal, versus how they want to feel, they realize that achieving those goals gets them validation that they’re worthy and good enough, but they don’t feel how they want to feel. So maybe they feel exhausted and stressed while they are working towards it or even empty because they aren’t really working towards something fulfilling for, you know, that’s in line with who they are. So when my overachievers look at how they really want to feel, they’re just going about it the way they think will net them. That result. But what they’re doing is really trying to get something to compensate for not feeling like they’re good enough. And they might really want to feel lighter, less stressed, joy, and contentment. But overachieving or putting pressure on themselves to achieve external validation doesn’t help them feel that way. So somebody who’s an overachiever might want to stop and say, Hey, like my desired feelings are to feel lighter, less stressed, joy, contentment. And what I’m doing right now feels really stressful and exhausting. So what’s out of whack? What’s out of line? What’s out of alignment? This can be really difficult work too, by the way, for overachievers and perfectionists, because there’s a lot of underlying work to let go of some of the strong limiting beliefs that tell these folks that they’re only good enough if they set the bar high and do impressive things. Trust me. I was once one of these people and it’s hard to let go of that because there’s a fear that if you don’t always strive to perform and achieve, you won’t look good. You won’t look like you’re the best. You won’t feel special. You won’t feel like you belong. Lots of different fears there. And in the overachiever’s mind being the best is what gives you value and purpose. At least you think that’s what gives you value and purpose. There’s so much below the surface. So I want to talk about health and wellness because some of the common goals, very common goals that people set in the new year are centered around wellness. Weight loss, getting in shape those types of things. And I see all too often people going about setting these types of goals in a way that sets themselves up for complete and utter failure. It’s generally because they pick a goal out of thin air like, I want to lose 20 pounds this year. And it might make a lot of sense when you set it because it feels like you need to lose weight. But setting a weight goal is usually just picking a number out of thin air because at the end of the day, is it really about the number? I get it, the numbers are a convenient progress-measuring tool. But there are other ways to measure health as well. And just as a society, we’ve been way too focused on the number on the scale and that’s getting better, but you know, it’s really not the end all, be all thing that you should be setting your goals by. And you also have to ask yourself, why 20 pounds? Like, are you really going to feel different when you’re 20 pounds lighter? Maybe physically you will, but the problem may be with your beliefs about yourself. And so, because your thinking isn’t changing, you’re not really going to feel any different in the long run. And this is where coaching can really help to get to the heart of the matter. You know, the goal your soul is whispering to you is to love yourself more. But the way you’re setting the goal is because your brain is telling you that you’re not good enough the way you are. So, you know, you could have the same end goal, maybe minus the numbers, but approaching it from a place of love. Like I’m already enough, and this is going to honor my body, the container my soul gets to live in, in this lifetime. Rather than not being good enough, it makes a world of difference. Another example is when I was younger, before I got divorced, I was really into endurance sports. Like long-course triathlons, half and full marathons, and anything like extreme. I always liked the, you know, I always went big. And part of me really enjoyed these things, but there was another part of me that couldn’t just do them for the enjoyment of it. There had to be this big peak goal or something that was really big or extreme because I would get attention for that. And I’d feel like I had worth, I felt special. I was good at something. But if I wasn’t the best or at least like doing something really, you know, big, it didn’t feel like enough. And I also have the same mentality with riding horses. I got into hunter-jumper riding, and I did some horse showing. And the first horse I had was not a show horse he’d stopped at every jump and I’ve fallen off and hurt myself more times than I care to count. Even tore my calf muscle once. Ouch. Hit my tailbone a few times. oof.. But so I digress, but, you know, so it wasn’t really enough just to have this horse and be able to ride it. I then spent a lot of money. A lot of money on a show horse. And, you know, then I went big with that. I showed my horse in Florida a couple of winters and I had to do, you know, it was like, oh my gosh, can you just, not just do this for the pure enjoyment of it? As for me, I love just hanging out at the barn. Like it doesn’t matter if I’m, you know, Showing at, you know, big horse shows necessarily. But for me it was something, was that same I’ve got to do it big. I got to do it and I got to do it big. And it really eventually started carrying a lot of weight for me, because then it was like, I have to, I have to do everything perfectly. And with horses, like that’s so hard because they sense your anxiety and, you know, you make a mistake and, oh God. So I was really hard on myself about it and it became not fun. So there were a lot of times when it just really didn’t feel good. And so both of these things are interests of mine, but the way I had set the goals around them really wasn’t in alignment with how I wanted to feel. Always pushing myself in these cases felt really heavy because when I wouldn’t perform to my standards, I feel really bad about myself. I’d beat myself up and, you know, it was a failure. Right? So, today it’s possible I could have similar goals, but I’ve, I would have totally different reasons for having them. Endurance sports make me feel empowered and strong and riding brings me joy and helps me feel just freedom. And I haven’t ridden in a long time. That’s a side note, but I would like to start again. But looking at these activities from the lens of feelings, I would let myself off the hook for the achievement part because my old MO was really to do it for the achievement and not the enjoyment. So those are some examples of how to look at setting intentions and goals. It’s really more of an excavation process than anything. Like getting to the heart of what you really want, because usually, the first goal that you set is not actually what you really want. And it’s also so important to know like your deeper, why and the feelings help with that. Like, why is this important to me? And then the next question is how do you reach your goals? Well, that’s work I can help you with. But the short answer is to make your actual goals and intentions as specific as you can. The way I set my goals doesn’t really follow the smart goal framework necessarily. And if you’re not sure what smart is, it’s an acronym. It stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. So we won’t cover that right now, but, I don’t necessarily follow that to the letter because it’s tough to measure feelings, but you can use that framework loosely to help you get specific and, you know, check in to make sure things are relevant and attainable. You just have to kind of come up with your own way to measure. So maybe that’s checking in weekly or monthly to see how you’re feeling. Like, how are you feeling in comparison to how you want to feel? Like, are you on track? Like. And then progress-wise, are you on track? And it also really, really, really helps to write your goals down. And it also helps to write your why down. So a statement, like I want to improve my communication skills so I can have a conversation about a difficult topic. Maybe you have something specific in mind. Maybe you don’t. And be able to stay present enough to communicate my feelings and needs or wants effectively rather than getting sucked into a dramatic, emotional reaction that isn’t authentic to who I am. And this is important to me because of XYZ. That was really long. So hopefully you followed that, but the idea is that, you know, you really want to get specific about the, what of it, first of all. Like what you want, what the pieces of that are, and then why it’s important. Or maybe you’ve set a goal of taking a vacation with your family and joy is the desired feeling, as well as family connection. Connection might be a value of yours. So taking a vacation will bring that to you. So your goal could be, I’ll take a vacation with my family this summer, somewhere we can connect with nature and enjoy each other’s company. This is important to me because I value the time I have with my family. Connection is important to me and connecting with my family brings me joy. So there’s an example of how it’s very specific of what you want and like what that’s going to bring for you. Y, you know why you want it. And then also really important to write them down somewhere that you can see them, that you can refer to them. I really got out of the habit of doing this, but one year… I mean, I still write my goals down, but one year I actually wrote my goals down in a special notebook. Every single day. And I mean, I missed days here and there, but most of the time for the year I wrote them down and I wrote them in my own words every, every day. And, you know, I reached nearly every goal that year that I had on my list. So it really is true that what gets written down is much more likely to come to fruition. So just remember that. It’s a really, really great thing to do. Also, I mean, you obviously have to take action, you know, you have to identify what you need to reach your goal. And in the examples above the communication example, you might identify that you need to be able to slow down and choose intentionally your responses instead of being at the mercy of your emotions and just reacting and regretting it later. So how will you do that? Maybe you’ll get a coach to help. Maybe you’ll read books, take a class. Or realize you need to work on being present. So you start a meditation practice or just a mindful awareness practice. And then you’d set little mini goals around these things that will help you reach the big one. So, you know, if you decide that you need to read some books or, you know, learn a little bit that way you might make a list of books and or if there’s a class, you might look at dates and put it on your calendar. You know, things like that. With the vacation example, you might identify that you need to save money. You need to pick dates, decide on a location, request vacation, book travel, and all those things. And then you’d set some little mini goals around those things and create a way to check in on your progress for maybe saving money, for example. The other thing that I run into with goals is that sometimes people don’t actually believe they can reach their goals or fulfill their intentions. They kind of put them down as a wishful thinking thing and their attitude is that it will be hard. Or maybe they say, for example, that they want to lose 20 pounds, but their belief that they’ll actually do it isn’t so strong. I love the belief list for this. I’ve talked about it before on the show. I think I dedicated a whole episode to it in fact. And the belief list is really just writing down every day as part of your journaling practice or just part of your routine. What you want to believe about yourself. And the key there is what do you WANT to believe about yourself. Because some of the things you won’t necessarily believe yet. Some of them, you will. So you’re just reinforcing, but some of them, you will have a hard time believing. And this is just about writing it down. I believe I am blank. Or I believe I will blank. So you’re training your brain to believe you’re building that muscle of believing. And it works. You really will see a difference if you do this. If you do this belief list. I’ve talked to a few people who took that suggestion and love it. It’s been so helpful for them too. So give it a try. So finally I mentioned, uh, the mini-goals are the checkpoints above. You’ll also really need to celebrate your progress along the way. You know, when you’ve hit a checkpoint of mini goal. As well as have a plan to celebrate when you reach your end goal, like how will you reward yourself? And that stuff can be simple. It can be bigger, you know, it’s up to you. And then one more thing. I don’t think I really talked about like, finding your, why enough. But that’s a really important part of goal setting; intention setting, like wanting to do anything, you know, deciding you want to do anything because, um, a lot of times when you decided you want to do something or change things, It takes you out of your comfort zone a little bit and getting out of your comfort zone is, well big surprise, uncomfortable. And so it’s really easy to give up if things feel too hard. And so having a really good, a really strong, well thought out why can help so much with that. And, you know, sometimes people struggle with that and you really want to get to the core. You know, the heart of the matter, like really the deep down, why. Like, you know, why do you want to take the vacation with your kids? So when it’s hard to save money, you remember that. Or, you know, why do I want to be able to communicate better with my partner? You know, cause I love my partner and I want to feel less tension in the relationship or whatever it is, you know? And The thing that most people do is kinda grab a surface why you know, and like, okay. That’s why. I’m like with losing weight. I want to feel healthier. Okay, well, why do you want to feel healthier? So, what I like to ask people is okay, you want to feel healthier. So if you felt healthier, like what would that make available for you? What would be possible if you felt healthier? Say, okay, well, I. I would have more energy. Okay, great. Like if you had more energy, what would be possible? And, you know, like in this example, like maybe, maybe somebody, who wanted to lose weight was, uh, overweight and really wasn’t able to participate in their children’s lives. Like they wanted to, you know, I might, we might get to the core why as It’s painful not to be able to participate in their kids’ lives, with energy and, you know, to really get, get in there and play with them and stuff. And, and that’s really painful. So their, why might really be because they want to spend time with their kids. Quality time and they want their kids to have memories of their mom playing with them. You know, so, and that’s, that gets down to the emotion. And that’s really what you’re going for with your why is looking for emotion. So. One last thing. One last thing. I’m also a really big fan of, I mentioned writing these down. But I’m also a really big fan and this, if this may feel too… too engineery for you. I’m not sure, but, um, I like ..To create. Like a document, like a Google document or put it in a planner. Like really have everything like, you know, put down all my intentions or my goals, and then I can easily find what I, you know, chose and what I kind of planned out and refer back to it next year. Because that’s really the magic and the goal setting and intention setting is actually at the end of the year, going back and reflecting on it. What did I accomplish? What didn’t I? Do you know, why? What was, what was great about the year? What lessons did I learn? If you listened to last week’s episode, I talked about lessons. You know, and those lessons also can really help you. Determine where, you know, where you want to go from there. Like what, where do you need to grow? What, where do you want to grow? What don’t you care about? Like, you know, what did you learn that you’d really like to learn more about? Things like that. And I’m also a big fan of like kind of putting, dropping, you know, I like to call them the rocks into my calendar, like the big things. You know, maybe you determine milestones, like in the vacation example… you know, maybe you decide that you want to go to Spain over the summer. And, you know, you need like, you know, I’m just throwing out a number, but $8,000 and you’re like, okay, well, if I save x amount of dollars by this date, I can afford it, but then you also know I have to book plane tickets at this date. So, you know, you might put those things on your calendar. You might put, I need to have you know, $2,000 for plane tickets saved by this day. I’m just throwing numbers out, but they’re probably not accurate at all, but, you know, It’s worth doing that, putting those things in your calendar and sort of getting in the habit of looking ahead. Yeah. And if you’re not a planner, Okay, that’s fine. But I’d encourage you to like, try it on. Try it on it helps. Anyway, so that’s really, you know, kinda my process and you don’t have to use my process, but I always love hearing other people’s processes because it can kind of, you know, just how they do things just to get ideas for my own. And, I’m also a really huge fan of taking what fits and leaving the rest. So if none of this feels like something that you would do. Just move on. Listen to the next episode. And if it does, great. or if there are little pieces of it that you want to try and some of it didn’t resonate. That’s great too. Take what you like leave the rest. And, so next time I come back, it’ll be new year’s. I’m going to take a couple of weeks away from the podcast and we’ll come back sometime in January with some new episodes for you. All right, friends, have a very happy new year and I’ll see you in 2023.
