The Why and How of Setting Goals [Ep 5]

Learn about the why and how of goal setting for success.   You don’t need more discipline, more willpower or a complete overhaul your whole life to become fit and flourishing!
You’ll learn about a framework and useful guidelines for designing your goals along with ways to clarify and boost your motivation so you can succeed in achieving your goals by taking them from blah to badass.   

To help you set positive, motivating goals you are excited to work toward, get this FREEGoal Setting for Success worksheet.

Segment 1: Why Set Goals

Segment 2: How To Set Great Goals: Goal Framework and Guidelines

Segment 3: Why Knowing "Your Why" Matters

What topics would you like covered on the podcast to help you be fit and flourishing in midlife?  Connect with me and let me know!

Instagram - @lisadupreecoaching

Email  - lisa@lisadupreecoaching.com

Website - http://www.lisadupreecoaching.com 

 FREE resource: Goal Setting for Success worksheet 

Host: Lisa DuPree

Editor: Hannah Hudson

Thanks for listening!

🎉 Free Resources 🎉

Jumpstart Checklist - Download the checklist and jumpstart your journey to a fitter, stronger, more confident and happier you. Get it here!

Midlife Mojo Jumpstart mini-course to create a health and fitness plan that fits your lifestyle. Over five days, you’ll receive actionable tips to improve your nutrition, exercise, and recovery—all tailored to the unique needs of midlife.

To help you set positive, motivating goals you are excited about, get this free Goal Setting for Success Worksheet.

Transcript

Welcome to Midlife Mojo, episode four. I'm Lisa. And today we'll be talking about the why and how of goals, because you don't necessarily need more discipline, more willpower, or a complete overhaul of your whole life to become fit and flourishing. However, it is helpful to know how to create goals that set you up for success. So today we're gonna go over a framework and some useful guidelines for designing your goals, along with ways to clarify and boost your motivation so that you can succeed in achieving them by taking them from boring to badass.

Welcome to Midlife Mojo, the podcast all about how to be fit and flourish in your fifties. With me, your host, with over 25 years of experience in the health, fitness, and wellness industry, Lisa DuPree, we'll be talking about all the things that support living life to the fullest. Let's dive in.

Let's just start out acknowledging the giant goal related elephant in the room. Goal setting is important. Most people would agree with that, but also for most people it's boring, like snooze inducing, tedium boring. Today my goal is to hopefully make it less boring so that it's more effective for you. Now, I have to admit that I enjoy the process of goal setting and learning about goal setting theory, but I'm just really nerdy like that. I like it so much in fact that I teach goal setting and motivation to undergraduates. And without exception, every semester this topic induces eye rolls, some yawns, and a course of, oh, I already know how to set goals. So, you know, my reply is great, like, you're making my job easy for me. But I always follow up with how often are you making real tangible progress on your goals?

And how often are you fully achieving your goals? And the response usually is, well, not often.  Reasons I typically hear are - it's too hard. I found it too hard to do, you know, X, Y, and Z. So I just bailed. I gave up. Also I just don't have the willpower to do it. I just don't have what it takes or I don't have enough time and got busy with other things. And my personal favorite is I just didn't do it. These responses usually come from having decided on a goal that is maybe vague, not easily measurable and or unrealistic given the current circumstances that the person is in. And so a goal is decided on, but how to accomplish it and why it is important to work toward that goal wasn't necessarily flushed out. Also, many times, working through the cost of achieving that goal in terms of  time, money, effort, and whether or not someone is able to or actually wants to pay that price that is needed to reach the goal is glossed over in the initial excitement of deciding on and setting that goal.

Why set goals? Goal setting is an integral part of bridging the gap between where you are now and what you want to accomplish, as well as motivating yourself to turn that vision of you at your best into reality. So by knowing precisely what you want to achieve, it helps to concentrate your efforts. Setting goals helps provide focus direction and short-term motivation. When it's done really effectively, it helps to organize your time and your resources. B by thinking through what's needed to get to your goal, you can also begin to spot some distractions that could throw you off track, as well as identifying some of the obstacles that could derail your efforts. T there's an abundance of scientific studies on the topic of goal setting, motivation and achievement. A lot of research has been conducted on personalization and goal setting to influence behavior change for lifestyle related factors for things like physical activity, weight loss, fruit and vegetable intake, and even smoking cessation.

Edwin Locke's motivation through conscious goal setting highlights several findings of interest and relevance to health and achievement. One of the most interesting findings was the relationship between goal, difficulty, and achievement. So setting specific difficult or what we call stretch goals may result in a more achievement compared to vague and easily achievable goals. However, certain conditions need to be present for this to be effective. So you have to take into consideration, you know, individual ability, knowledge level, and well as commitment to the goal to get this higher achievement. Interestingly more recent research by Hoffner and Keith, and I hope I'm saying the name right, 'cause this is a study I believe out of Germany. It was published in the frontiers of studies that showed that study participants who failed at a high or stretch goal that was also specific showed a decrease in self-esteem and motivation to compare to participants who attain the goal. Not surprising there, given that failing to make progress or attain goals can cause you to have some pretty negative effects. yeah, you can feel shame, feel discouraged, get frustrated. I wanna talk about how to best set up your goals for your overall success.

A useful way of making goals more powerful, more effective is to use what's called the smart framework. While there are plenty of variants out there, smart usually stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound. When you're setting goals, think about being precise, hone in on specific actions, include dates, times, amounts, so that you have something that you can benchmark and track and measure achievement by. If you do this, you'll know exactly what needs to be done and can easily assess your progress. You wanna make your goals realistic, something that you can achieve. it's not uncommon to set goals that are too difficult. So you want to, to really look at your current circumstances, consider how important this goal is for you, and how confident are you that you are gonna be able to achieve it. because, you know, setting something that is too much of a stretch goal or too big of a goal you might not appreciate how much time it's gonna take or, you know, the obstacles that may get in your way or, you know, if you have to build some skills or get additional resources to be able to achieve it.

Start smaller and really build momentum. setting a goal that is also really meaningful to you that you are ready, willing, and able to take on is another key component. This helps to make the behaviors and actions supporting your goal a priority. By setting short term specific and clearly defined goals, you can measure progress, get quick wins in what might previously have seemed  a long meandering grind for a goal. These quick wins can help raise your confidence levels as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you've set. So in addition to utilizing the smart format, there are three other strategies I wanna mention today to create effective achievable goals. The first one is when you're stating your goal, do it as a positive. You want to be something that you want it to be, something you are drawn toward, something that is desired versus something that you are wanting to avoid.

It's called an approach goal versus an avoidance goal. So something like executing a task, well, like drinking eight cups of water a day is gonna be more positive, then don't make the mistake of drinking soda all day. Simple example. But you want to, to really have a more positive focus for your goal. The second one is you want to write your goal down and put it somewhere that you can see it frequently to help keep it at the top of your mind. One of my go-to favorites for this is to have a goal written on a bright green post-it note on my desk. and also I write it on the whiteboard that hangs on a refrigerator. That way I know I'm gonna see those reminders several times a day. And so it helps keep me focused and helps keep that a priority for me.

The third thing is to set performance goals, not outcome goals. Most longer term or bigger picture visions are focused on an outcome, which is fine outcomes. You, you wanna have, you know, your outcome, your end goal, your end result, but you wanna set shorter term goals around actions that you have as much control over as possible. So that's things that you are able to do, to do your behaviors, things that you have the ability to influence, because it's really discouraging to set a goal and then not make progress on it or fail to achieve it for reasons that are beyond your control. If you base your goals on your personal performance, things that you personally have control over, then you have control over the achievement of your goals and it helps to ultimately be able to draw more satisfaction from them.

An example of an outcome goal. Let's see, I know setting your goal to place in the top three in your age group in a 5K. So you're training for your 5K and your goal is to get in the top three, which again, not not an undesirable outcome. However, you don't have control over who shows up that day and who's in your age group. You don't have a lot of control over that. you don't have control over some of the aspects of the race course. You may have put in your best effort, done all the training necessary, and you come in sixth in your age group. And so <laugh> you know, it's great, you still have a wonderful accomplishment there, but it wasn't exactly your goal. So why don't you set your goal a little bit more toward that performance piece.

Things that you do have control over your training schedule, how often you train, how effective your training is. Completing your 5K with your personal best or setting a personal record is a much more performance-based goal where you have control over many more of the variables. Just a quick example of an outcome versus a performance goal. And let's put all these things together in place with an example. So gonna start out with an example and then we're just gonna hone that goal using some of these principles in the smart format. Say, my goal is to stop stressing out and being lazy so I can get more stuff done. That's my goal. That goal is pretty general, it's pretty vague. How are you going to measure “stop stressing out”?

And how are you going to assess not being so lazy? And also , what does getting more stuff done mean? This goal could use some help there with being specific, measurable, realistic. There's no time bound element. And then it's also kind of negative focused. You are going to stop being stressed out. Don't be so lazy, <laugh>. This in and of itself is not a very approach oriented or a positive oriented goal. Let's see if we can play around with it a little bit. We're gonna change that up to, my goal is to increase my mental productivity and physical energy so I can get more stuff done. That's a little better. It's getting there, it's still  vague. How do you know if you've increased your mental productivity? How do you know when your physical energy is increased?

And again,  what does it really mean to get more stuff done? However, it is more positive focused. So you're talking about increasing your productivity, increasing your energy, getting more stuff done. All right, let's see if we can make it a little bit better. We're gonna do our goal for the next week. I will stop using social media on weekdays during the evenings between six and 9:00 PM so that I have time to exercise and read something fun for relaxation. Okay? So that is it's got the smart component, we're doing something specific. It's actionable. You're going to not use social media on weekdays during specific times six to 9:00 PM and you're gonna do that so that you can build in some exercise and read for fun, for relaxation. You've got those smart components, but it's still  negative focused  'cause it's “I'm stopping the social media”.

It's more detailed, but it's not exactly as motivating as it could be. So last, less go at it this week on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I'll exercise from six to 7:00 PM and read a mystery novel from eight to 9:00 PM so that I'm able to mentally unwind and stay physically active, which will help me reduce my overall stress levels. This has got those smart components. It's very specific. You know exactly what you're gonna be doing at what time, on what days. It is a positive focus because you're able to do something positive. You are going to be exercising, you're going to be reading a novel and it's gonna help with you being able to  mentally relax, unwind. You're still gonna be able to get your exercise in, which helps overall reduce your stress levels, which was  going back to the beginning. That first goal was about stopping stressing out and not being so lazy and getting more stuff done. So you've got that, the smart components, you've got a positive focus. It's more detailed, it's more motivating. You've got something clear that you can plan out and that you can look forward to.

Once you've created a positive oriented goal and you've got it in that smart format, it's really important to identify and understand the motivation behind what you wanna accomplish. In the book, Start with Why, author Simon Sinek talks about the golden circle for human motivation. Even though Sinek's concept is focused on business and marketing, its core principle really focuses on what motivates us to do what we do. And this concept is relatable to just about every aspect of life, including health and wellbeing. What he talks about is this golden circle. and if you can kind of create this in your mind's eye, think of a set of three concentric circles, like a bullseye. And the why is the innermost circle, that bullseye. The what is the outermost circle and the how is the circle in between those two. If you're going from inside the bullseye out, you've got the why, the how, and then the what. When setting goals, most of us start with that outer circle, focusing on the what, which is the outcome or end result.

And then we move into that very next circle, the how, which is what are the actions, what are the strategies, what are we gonna do?  How, how are we gonna do it? and then that's  where most things stop. We don't really go deeper and clearly connect it with the why, which is right there in the center in the bullseye. And so the concept of the golden circle is that if we can start with that innermost circle, start with the bullseye we're more likely to end up with a greater commitment and better results. because we are acting from our motivation, acting from your why. Because knowing your why is the thing that's driving you. It's helping keep you inspired and motivated to continue. If you're not clear on your why, it takes a lot more to stay motivated and it can mean that you'll end up more likely to get frustrated, discouraged, or give up.

You know, your why is what motivates you and it's tied to your beliefs and what you value, the how or the actions that you take and the processes and strategies that are used and your, what is your goal or the end result or outcome of the action, beginning with the why. It helps you create an inspired connection to your goal. And then if we can discern and start with that innermost circle and that bullseye, we are more likely to end up with a greater commitment and better results. So using the golden circle concept is not only a better way to craft your goal and connect with your values and your purpose and your motivation, but it's also biologically sound because the brain's neocortex, this is the part that's responsible for logical thinking, it really attaches itself to the facts or the what.

And that relates to the smart goal process going through making your goal specific, making it measurable, making it attainable, making it relevant and time-bound. These are all logical  executive functioning practices. However, the limbic system of the brain is where they think is the home of your emotions and your feelings and it controls those gut decisions. And so decisions that are made because  they feel right, they are in line with what you value most are often those that have the most compelling why attached to them. They also really connect with your emotion and what's most desired. So connecting your goal not only to your bigger picture, health, vision and having a clear understanding of your why, it'll help increase the likelihood of achieving your specific outcome.

All right, let's recap. We've talked about a lot of things today. How to effectively set the goal using your smart framework, some key guidelines, also Simon Sinek's Golden Circle. Why knowing your why is important. Also building out the what and the how as well, and how it all fits together. How it all supports your overall goal in your bigger vision for yourself to be fit and flourishing. Since we've covered so many things, I have created a short worksheet for you. If this is something that would be helpful I will include the link in the show notes. It's a short one page worksheet that you can use to guide you through these steps to set your most effective goal. 

Thank you so much for listening. If you've enjoyed the show, please take a moment to leave a five star rating and a positive review. And until next time, keep your mojo rising. If this episode has been helpful to you, I'd love to hear from you. If there's a topic you'd like to hear more about, send it my way. Email me at lisa@lisadupreecoaching.com or connect with me on Instagram @lisadupreecoaching. Thank you for listening. Bye for now.