Episode 15: How to Have Your Best Year Yet
As we approach the end of the year, it's an opportune time to engage in reflection and goal setting, crucial practices that can help us create our best year yet. In our latest podcast episode, we dive into these topics, providing guidance and sharing our personal experiences.
Reflecting on the past year is an essential step in planning for the future. We encourage listeners to delve into their memories, pinpoint moments of joy, and identify when they felt most like themselves. Photos can serve as a useful tool for jogging memories and feelings. By looking back, we gain insight into what we want for the future and take action towards our goals.
Reflection plays a significant role in planning for the future. We share our methods of reflection, which include writing down monthly highlights and using thought-provoking reflection questions. It's important to reflect not just on our accomplishments but also on our feelings and experiences. Both positive and negative experiences can provide valuable feedback for future decisions.
We also discuss the significance of the people we spend time with. Relationships can impact our sense of self and influence our trajectory. Taking the time to reflect can help us make the most of our future experiences.
Moving onto goal setting, we discuss the need to ask ourselves what we want in life and understand the deeper reasons behind our desires. This requires a level of vulnerability and honesty. We emphasize the importance of our thoughts and feelings in goal setting, and the significance of reflecting on our goals as we work towards them.
We also delve into the SMARTER method for setting goals. This acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Additive, Rewarding, Timely, Evaluate, and Reevaluate. We highlight the importance of setting personally rewarding and valuable goals. Considering timing and being open to changing goals is also vital.
We stress the importance of enjoying the pursuit of our goals. The journey towards a goal can be just as important as achieving it. Finding joy in the process is crucial. We also provide tips on setting smarter goals, such as writing them down and reverse engineering them.
Finally, we discuss the importance of reflecting on our progress and making necessary adjustments. We also touch on the concept of identity shift and its relation to achieving goals. We remind listeners to embrace change and evolve as a person to achieve their desired goals.
We hope this episode serves as a guide for listeners to reflect on their past, set meaningful goals for the future, and embark on a journey towards their best year yet.
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Jess: 0:01
Hello, friend, and welcome to Sturdy Girl, a podcast focused on strength, not size, where you'll hear conversations around healthy body image, cultivating confidence and being a resilient human in both body and mind. Sturdy Girl is the podcast where we shift the focus away from your appearance and on to living a big, rad life you deserve. Hello, my Sturdy friends, and welcome to the last episode of the first season of Sturdy Girl. I'm your host, jess Heiss, joined by my dear friend Ali Hi hi. Hello, jet lagged, and back from an epic adventure. Thank you for joining me. We are recording this in the evening, at the end of our workdays respectively, and cannot make any promises on the lack of giggles.
Ali: 0:48
So Jess is in Pacific time, I'm in Central time and, like Jess said, I just got back from Australia yesterday. So I've been in like 17 different time zones in the last 24 hours.
Jess: 1:00
Do you know what day it is? No, I don't even know who I am right now, so it should be fun. You don't have to know who you are, because what you do know about is how to have your best year. I do definitely know how to do that. That's kind of our jam today. We'll just talk about what it means to have your best year, how to reflect, how to make that happen, because this is like a blank slate or like a brand new notebook. I journal all the time and I love when I start a new notebook and I'm like it's fresh. There are so many possibilities.
Ali: 1:29
Are you the type of person that you open up a new notebook, you write in it for like half of it and then you get a new one and you're like, oh, but I'm so excited to use the new notebook that you forget about the old one.
Jess: 1:39
No, ali, because my notebooks are really boring. I don't get cutesy little ones, they are moleskin unlined.
Ali: 1:47
Okay, I think that anyone listening needs to have a little background of what we just talked about for the last hour, because I think it really pertains to living your best life is the fact that, just as a Virgo and I'm an Aquarius and we are very different humans in the best of ways. You know, when you message me and we're saying, hey, this is what we're going to talk about, do you want to jump on? I was like hell. Yeah, I do, because I think we both come from very different perspectives of how to have your best year and what that looks like and like the steps behind it, and I think it'll hit points for different people, simply because, like the way we look at things are so different. Like my journals are bright colored, really aesthetic, have like all the perfect lines. If I don't write it perfectly, I rip it out and I start a new one.
Jess: 2:34
Okay, I get analysis paralysis If I buy pretty journals. I don't like to write in them. It's like when you get stickers and you're like I love the sticker, but where do I put it? I'm just going to like pile up and I like the online, because then I can like doodle in the margins and I have all different colored pens that I use. Like shout out to people who have glitter gel pens in elementary, middle school Right, that's my jam, love it. I love this. Okay, let's talk about goals. Let's talk about having your best year.
Ali: 3:03
Let's deepen. I think the big place to start is reflecting on the year you had. You didn't know where you're going without knowing where you've been, and I think you know something that I've heard many times in my life and I've said it to clients now too, and don't quote me on it because I don't know who said it, but it's that most of us struggle with anxiety or with depression, and it's because depression is living in the past and anxiety is fear of the future. If we can't reflect on what we've been through and why we've been through it, we can't be fully present of where we are and what we've learned. We won't ever know what we want in the future, and so it will always feel upended.
Jess: 3:42
And I think one thing too, before diving into just like what reflection means is just that this episode is not a you're going to listen and be able to apply right away. This is like get out your fancy journal or your basic notebook or your notes up on your phone and pause. Think right, these aren't answers that are going to just come to you right away.
Ali: 4:00
It's going to take a little bit of thinking time I think, think me time, and also like trial and error. I read this say like live in the messy because, like the messy, life is always the life that's the most enjoyable.
Jess: 4:11
And then you're taking action, absolutely. Yeah, I like it. What is reflecting on your year look like Cause that's one thing is what went well for the year. When did you feel most like yourself? What were you doing? Who are you with? Where were you? How did you feel last year when I kind of sat down and did a big reflection? One of the things I like to do is pull out my phone and I'll scroll back through pictures because it'll kind of prompt cause like off the top of my head. I don't remember what happened in January of this year. So I go back and look at pictures and I can kind of reflect like, oh, there's this picture, oh, I was with all that was when we went and visited my family or that's when we did things, and they can kind of prompt so that I can write oh, I remember now I did this. I was feeling this way, man, when I did that hike with this person, I felt so alive and felt so like myself and the person that I am and or want to become.
Ali: 4:59
I almost do something similar where I write down every month of the year and I write down what are three things that I did that month, like what was the main focus that month or what were the common themes that showed up. And some of those months might be like, oh, I worked, I worked my ass off that month, or maybe it was that you went on this incredible vacation and had like a life changing experience. But like writing down what happened each month, you can actually see like a lot did happen, right. I think a lot of times we sit on autopilot and we let life happen like to us and not for us.
Jess: 5:32
Or just like oh, it's today, okay we're already, we're talking about 2024 and how to have our best year, so I'm already planning for the next year. Right, thinking about that, and if we don't reflect on what went well and what didn't, how are we going to actually make it our best year? If we don't work like how? Work backwards, if you will, but I like that, I actually do the same thing to where I sing, I pull out my phone and, like you know, I start in January, but I do. I write down month by month. Susanna Conway, I believe, is her name. She does a big unravel your year PDF that I love to do every year and it's very much these reflection questions so that you can look forward into the next year and say like, okay, these are the things that went well, as a way to just kind of take the time to reflect.
Ali: 6:11
And I think reflection it can be such a positive experience and sometimes we don't allow it to be right. When we reflect, we sometimes only look at what did we do wrong or what didn't go well for us or what could have been done better. When reality like, allow it to be a positive opportunity to say, okay, what did I learn from this? What was the feedback? Where did I feel most aligned? Okay, if I didn't feel aligned this year, why? What is maybe the intangible that we're missing?
Jess: 6:40
Going back to talking about our differences. In astrological science, I am a doer and I think you're in a feeler and that kind of thing too, but I'm a big, you know, making the checklist, checking things off, and so I will go back on, like, reflecting on the experiences, but it's reflecting on the feelings around those experiences too, because you could go on some epic vacation with the wrong people I'm going to say wrong people with air quotes, like people that you don't enjoy spending time around, or you go to a place that maybe you didn't enjoy and you like the act of travel, but you felt super out of alignment with that whole experience because of certain reasons. And so being able to reflect on the feeling of like, well, yeah, I went to a really cool place, but that wasn't exactly enjoyable.
Ali: 7:20
I actually have a perfect example for this and she's going to probably kill me when she listens to this, but that's okay. I went to Miami this year for my close friend's 30th birthday and it was going to be so much fun. It was a girls trip, right, and I want to preface this with like I absolutely adore her. I had a great time. I love celebrating her. The trip itself was not my kind of trip. I didn't know most of the people on the trip. It was a lot of her friends from high school. We went to Miami and I had a envision what I thought Miami would be like. It was not at all what I thought it was like. I love to be social but I'm not a big drinker, so like that did not balance out well for me. There were just like a lot of things to that, like you were just saying is like great experience, but I got a lot of feedback from that trip.
Jess: 8:08
I just think of Will Smith's song. That's a feeling of Miami. It's so sweet. I can feel that kind of moment.
Ali: 8:13
All that to say, though, there's also been other trips I went on this year that were the most aligned I have ever felt, australia being one of them, mexico being another one. I went on a business retreat this summer that I met 10 other women. I went on this trip like literally on a whim. It was the month of the trip that I finally said, yes, I'm going to go, and came home with matching tattoos with 10 people. I didn't know a week prior and just learned so much about myself. You know, same thing with Australia came home with so many epiphanies. I had never been on an international trip before, let alone going by myself, and if you had asked me a year ago if I was going to even go on any trips this year, I would have had no idea.
Jess: 8:54
But great experiences. You've had some good adventures this year. I think that that just ties in really well with that reflection piece and we're using big examples of epic travel. Know that the reflection on how you want to feel or how you felt like you're most like yourself in 2023 doesn't have to be these huge adventures. It could be a reflection piece on who did you spend time around throughout the year, because I feel like, as I enter my 30s and I have friends that I've had since elementary school. I have friends that I met in college. I have friends that I made as an adult, friends I've met through Instagram. Ali, I love you. You tend to reflect a little bit more on how you spend your time and who you spend your time with, because you don't have to, by default, still be friends with the person that you've known since elementary school. You might live very different lives, and so taking that time to reflect on like who did I spend time around that made me feel most like myself.
Ali: 9:46
To your point. Yes, we're talking like big epic trips, but that was also one of my. That was my words this year. I choose words every year to kind of set the precedence of what I want to experience that year. Right, what the focus is, I like to say, rather than like New Year's resolutions I say New Year's intentions, because resolutions are typically something that we set and we forget and we try to jump back on and then we fail and then we blame ourselves for they're never really a positive connotation right, there's something we want to change. Yeah, when I say intention, I mean like, where do you want to spend your time, your energy, what impact do you want to have? Like, my words were intention, impact and invest. Those were my words for this year and for me that meant impact as many women as possible through what I was doing and who I was investing in myself, in my business. So that meant travel. That also meant spending a lot of money on things that I just didn't know yet education and being intentional with my time, intentionally spending time with people who make me a better person, who make my life better, and I think for all of us we can find words like that, maybe pinpoint or hit home in different ways. Right, it doesn't have to be as big as traveling internationally.
Jess: 11:03
I like that too, just in the context of themes. So, while we're still reflecting on our 2023, can you start to notice themes of? I felt really connected, I felt grounded. Are there things that you keep coming up with, these feelings of like? This is when I felt most in alignment was with these feelings, with these people and noticing that theme so that you can choose a word for 2024. Ali, you chose fantastic words. I did not.
Ali: 11:30
Don't say that you had a great word. Life just wanted to throw it at you. The universe said hold my beer.
Jess: 11:36
I chose the word growth for 2023. And I meant it in the context of I wanted to grow my coaching business. I knew that I was planning to start a podcast at some point in 2023. So the personal growth that came from that and Q1 of 2023 was universe seven right in and said all right, every area of your life is going to simultaneously implode. We're going to watch you grow.
Ali: 11:59
We're going to see you grow in the ways that you don't necessarily want to grow, but you probably need.
Jess: 12:05
I mean just personal life, family life, work, business, friendships, like it was insane. And my point of that, I suppose, without going into greater detail, is be intentional in the word that you choose and take that time in your notes app, in your journal, whatever it is, to expound on what that word means to you, get specific because clearly the universe is listening.
Ali: 12:29
You know me and Jess talk a lot about like the universe listens and like manifestation, but it all starts with with us. It starts with what you are open to doing or receiving. That was a big, that was a big phrase that my own business coach said to me this year is like be open to receiving and I'm like receiving what. And she's like exactly, you know, and as you reflect on 2023 and look back at all the things that you've been through and all the things that you've experienced, really coming back to that, that mentality of like OK, if I'm open to receiving, what do I want to receive this year?
Jess: 13:02
What does that look like? If anything can come at me right now, I'm open to it. Yeah, I want to make one point, and then let's talk about how the heck to make 2024 your best year, because I think we've covered reflection really well and just the importance of taking the time to reflect and review, because that's ultimately when we get to talking about goals. That is the biggest way we start tangibly working towards our goals is having that reflection time. But one point I wanted to make you were talking about New Year's resolutions and not liking them and, while on the base level, I agree, I also really like New Year's because there's this thing called temporal landmarks in psychology, where it's basically being able to delineate our past self from our future self. So a Monday, the first of the month, january 1, having those kind of version of a blank slate to say I'm starting this thing that I'm working towards, I am working towards this version of my future self, and it gives us essentially more motivation to do the thing, having a clean slate and a fresh start.
Ali: 14:02
That's why I switched it to intentions rather than resolution. I like it, yeah, because with resolutions we see that higher failure rate, not because people are undisciplined or unmotivated. It's because they're not breaking down their goals the way that we're going to break down for them on this podcast. They're making their goals be too big and too open-ended, or too big. If we break them down into bite-sized pieces, they're so much more attainable.
Jess: 14:28
Agreed. I think that kind of jumps us right into talking about having your best year yet. And I think the first question is the most important question what do you want? Because that's the biggest question to ask yourself. Because if we are on autopilot, if we are just going and doing instead of being, we can sometimes be taking actions that aren't necessarily the direction we want to go, or we're like, hey, actually I don't want this, this isn't what I want to be doing. So, taking the time to just say what do you want in life, what kind of lifestyle, what kind of thing, what kind of activities? And so this is going back to that delineation of past self to future self. I'll get to talking about future self in a second, but that's where we want this kind of I'm not going to say dreaming, but there's no limits to this. When you're like, what do I want my life to look like? Because we're going to reverse, engineer that, to say, ok, we start from this big thing, we can work all the way down to what does it look like on a daily basis? What kind of things can I do consistently that will work me towards those big things? So, taking the time, just write down all the things. What do you want your life to look like? What are you doing, what are you seeing, what are you feeling? Because there's no right or wrong answer here.
Ali: 15:33
It's your life. But what experiences do you want to have? Who do you want in your life? Where do you want to live? I love that most coaches use this analogy. But if you could wave a magic wand over your life, what would it look like? What would it feel like? Because I think when we ask the question what do you want, we answer in very simplistic terms. We all hear the same things I want to lose weight, I want to make more money, I want to have a kid, I want to start dating someone. A very simplistic answer. And the deeper question there is why do we want it? Or what do we think having that will give us? So, once you've written down what you want, then answer what do you think it's going to give you? Because that's what you want.
Jess: 16:15
It's the why underneath it's taking the time to actually understand. Ok, if I said I want out of life to live in a cabin in the mountains and then when I stopped and asked myself why and I reflected on it and maybe I'm journaling it out I realized that it's that my current job is super people facing and I get really like socially drained and the idea of living in the mountains means less people facing and being in nature, which I enjoy, right. So you can like uncover that why you're kind of working backwards.
Ali: 16:45
Yeah, I asked my clients a lot of like the why under the why, yeah, and it usually comes with a space of, like, radical vulnerability. We can ask you why? Until we're blue in the face and you still won't answer us, until you're ready to have radical vulnerability, where, if someone tells me, okay, ali, I want to lose weight, and I say, okay, what do you think losing weight is going to give you? Why do you want that? And they say, well, I want to look good in a swimsuit because I feel insecure taking photos. Okay, why do you feel that way? Well, because of a comment someone has made and I can't be present. Right, it keeps going further and further, to a point where it's actually a conversation about you want to feel good in your body, you want to be present in your life, you want to feel loved and accepted by the people who are around you. You want to feel free, right, that has nothing to do with weight loss. Weight loss might be a byproduct, but it's actually about you want to feel loved and accepted and worthy and healthy. It's internal work, so much more than external. But we live in a world that is very external, results based, actions based, right? Yeah, you and I talked about this on past podcasts together, but it's the thoughts and the feelings part that we love to ignore and that is such a big part of goal setting is when you picture this dream 2024, you picture this future year. What is it that's making you feel right?
Jess: 18:06
That's going to be the driver.
Ali: 18:08
It's not just the actions because you might be able to check off of under things off your list.
Jess: 18:12
That's awesome, but it's how you feel about them that matters If you're not present and enjoying it, and it's just like onto the next thing. What's the point Exactly Because that's the whole point of this entire episode is we're going to talk about goal setting here in just a second, but thinking about the feelings is just as important, and that's one of those pieces, too, that I've already mentioned is reflecting on goals. So as you set them, as you start working towards them, is setting up intentional time to reflect, because you might get into it and realize that this isn't the season just by having that reflection piece of how you check in, how you can adjust.
Ali: 18:48
That's major.
Jess: 18:49
I'm getting out of myself.
Ali: 18:51
But that's okay. I think that's the beauty of goal setting is. There's not really like a right or wrong way to do it. I think it's whatever flows best for you is what you need to do. Everyone's going to do it differently. You know, when looking at themes or we're looking at, okay, how am I going to get somewhere, a lot of it's through messy action, it's through accident, the fuck around and find out. Oh, I love that mentality. Yeah, I also love the like do it for the plot. That's a theme lately and I'm like you know what? I am single, self employed and have a dog. I am literally doing it for the plot, so that all of my friends can live vicariously. That is my mission right now. I'm here for this, but in like, a very like healthy, realistic way, not a reckless way, okay. Okay, not in a like my life on fire type of way, but I think it does. It comes back down to this mentality of, like you said, write down everything you want. What does your best year look like? What is it? What does it feel like? What is the best month of your life? What if you could picture your perfect dream day? Great. How do we have more of that in 2024? What does?
Jess: 19:57
the dream day look like, because your days become your weeks, become your months, become your year and obviously most of us have our day jobs and have our responsibilities and have those pieces. But just because we have all of those adulting responsibilities doesn't mean we can't take a little more control and or accountability for how we're feeling, what choices we're making outside of those obligations to live a life that we enjoy. So let's talk about goal setting. Let's just jump right in. I have a few side tangents, like an already feel, coming on, but we'll take those as they come. One of the ways that we talk about setting goals is most people have heard of smart goals. I was joking before I hit record that this was part of high school curriculum, was creating smart goals, and I have an acronym that is smart or goals. That comes from Casey Joe Orvidus, who is a behavior change expert, phenomenal human, and I've adopted it. I take no credit for this. I have just a way to explain it but might be slightly my own. And so the S is specific. When we make our goals, when we think about our 2024, what is a specific goal? Because I want to be healthy isn't specific. It's narrowing it down into something that is a little bit more tangible, if you will, and it can be bigger, it can be. I want to run a half marathon and then you can get more specific when you pick a race or pick something to narrow it down, but broad scope. I want to lose weight, I want to eat more vegetables. I want to know whatever that goal is. It doesn't have to be an enormous goal, but it needs to be specific enough that it's measurable, which is the M, because what you measure, you can improve. So I had a couple of friends that did like I only two thousand 23 servings of plants in 2023. There's your measurable objective. Narrow it down and I think it worked out. It was like six to eight servings a day of plants. So then you can kind of compound that so you can measure it. If we're not measuring to be able to then weekly, monthly, whatever it is reflect how we improve.
Ali: 21:51
Sitting here listening to how cute it is the way that you say measure.
Jess: 21:55
Measure.
Ali: 21:56
Measure. Potato potato Nebraska and me is coming out. I'm sitting over here just grinning, watching, just talk. So continue please.
Jess: 22:05
I'm learning, okay the A in smarter is additive. How can goal oriented actions add to your life? It's not about what you're taking away. It's like when someone wants to go on a new diet and the first thing they do is talk about all the things they're taking out, and the best thing that you can do if you're wanting to work on eating habits is ask yourself what can you add? What is adding to your life? So the goal of eating more plants, it's how can you add more color, add more fruits and vegetables, add more beans whatever it is into the diet, versus taking it away? We respond from a like behavior change and like habit building perspective. We respond better when we're adding things into our lives versus taking them away.
Ali: 22:44
It feels more pleasurable, it's not as restrictive, which you are more likely to follow through with.
Jess: 22:50
And that goes exactly into the R, which is rewarding. So when we're talking about setting goals, this is ultimately a behavior change. It comes from things that are personally rewarding and valuable. So when you set that goal to run a half marathon, did you do it because you see all these people on social media doing it, because your friend did it, and they seem to like it or some of their byproduct, versus something that is personally rewarding to you, like I've set this goal and it seems hugely impossible, but I want to try. Right, I want to challenge myself. That's why I started running. Actually, I had a friend put a post on Facebook and was like hey, I'm training for a half and I want some to train with me. Who wants to do it? And I was like, huh, half marathon sounds terrifying.
Ali: 23:27
Sign me up and that's how I went on as many trips as I went on this year. That is not a normal C, I would say. In the Midwest, where I have been born and raised, it is. You basically build your life and you stay here and this is the life that you have. For me, travel had always been scary. Traveling alone was even more terrifying.
Jess: 23:47
And look at your 2023. Wild man you. Strong, resilient, independent, human you.
Ali: 23:53
But it was for a bigger reason. And again it goes back to like the lasting behavior change came from the feeling. It came for, you know, the pleasure of like experiencing a different culture, a different lifestyle or whatever it might be For new people Right, Rather than like I had to do something a certain way.
Jess: 24:12
I like that. The next part of smarter goals is timely. So I think the original smart is time based, right. So it's like setting a deadline and deadlines aren't necessarily a bad thing, but this is more along the lines of is this a timely goal? Where are you at in life right now? What kind of things are going on? If you are a parent of multiple children and work a job and have 17 other things going on, maybe it's not the time to train for marathon. Maybe it's not the time to work on weight loss or work on certain things, but goals need to, I'm going to say, fit into your life, because sometimes there are challenging things, scheduling pieces that are worth doing for a goal, but it's having to get real with yourself. So where am I? Does this make sense? I mean, I stepped down from competing and my powerlifting meet last month, partially because of my shoulder, which is finally feeling better after like four months. But I also I had started a new job that was really stressful. I had like three or four other things going on that were taking away from my bandwidth to train consistently, to eat consistently in a way that supports my training, that makes me feel the best, and it just ultimately was not the time to go work towards qualifying for nationals in that powerlifting, and that's what made sense, so timely.
Ali: 25:24
Your own intuition Exactly, we all have a gut feeling. We all do, and most of the time we're arguing with our head and our heart and we're not paying attention to what our gut is actually saying.
Jess: 25:35
Or you're like me where it's all about like the action taking versus checking, and be like this doesn't feel good anymore.
Ali: 25:41
Recognizing that, with any goal, if it doesn't feel good, if it doesn't feel right, if, for some reason, the timing is off or you start working towards a goal and you're like this is actually not really what I want, it's also okay to change it and to pivot, to shift something about it.
Jess: 25:57
That's the rad thing about being human is you can just continue f-ing around and finding out.
Ali: 26:02
Literally, we're all pretending to be adults, we're just figuring it out as we go. You just learn more as you get older. So I think this is a little bit of a tangent, but there's so much power in that realizing that the things that maybe scare you, or the things that you want in life and you don't have yet, are simply things that you just don't know yet, and you have so much control in the sense of learning and experiencing and getting to know what those things are. And then there always be new things that you can learn or try or experience. Right, so it's not actually scary, it's just something you don't know yet.
Jess: 26:35
It's maybe pursuit of one goal leads to you exploring something else entirely.
Ali: 26:40
Absolutely. I mean, if you looked back on my job history, people would laugh and be like what the hell I was leaning in? I had a running joke with my best friend, Her, and her husband would always say, like you're the most indecisive person that I know. And I would say, no, I'm actually the most decisive because once something doesn't feel good anymore and I know it's not the path for me, I don't want to waste time continuing to do it when there might be something else that's better. And now that's not with everything, but in the terms of career and finding what I'm passionate about. If I hadn't done that, I would have never found coaching.
Jess: 27:12
Okay, the last part, the additional portion of smarter goals is efficacy or self-efficacy, so, in the face of obstacles, you're able to continue working towards your goals. Are you able to lean into, trusting yourself that you have set these goals, that they are going back to your why? Does it still fulfill your why, then? The R in smarter is reverse engineering, and I kind of alluded to this earlier is identifying your outcome and then working backwards from there to break things down into smaller pieces and steps, all the way down to what can I do daily, what can I do on a consistent or frequent basis? That puts me one step closer to achieving these goals. So clearly, my brain is stuck on running because I just think about the running, the half marathon goal. How do you break it down into tiny pursuits? Or the book atomic habits call them tiny habits. So it's like what is my frequency for running? It's having those tiny pieces of do I have the running shoes? How am I getting myself out for this run? Do I hire a coach? Whose plan do I create? And it's having those things like how do you track how each of those objectives are working towards that bigger goal? We reverse engineer it so that it's not just some big, vague goal of well, I run around this half marathon but, like, aside from putting one foot in front of the other, I don't really know how to get there. It gives you a strategy to work towards.
Ali: 28:31
Yeah, I think that one's even more important to really lean into and to almost break it down for everyone Of. Okay, how do we reverse engineer If we're looking at this big overarching goal and we're thinking this sounds impossible For a lot of my clients. Their big goal is to feel confident in their skin, it's to heal their relationship with food, it's to like who they see in the mirror, and those are things that feel really intangible right now. They feel impossible. It doesn't feel like that even exists. So how do we go from having that big goal and breaking it down into such small, bite-sized pieces that, as we're building these habits and changing them into like lasting behaviors? How is it pleasurable and it's realistic to the point where we end up achieving the goal and not even realizing the whole process that it took to get there and we actually enjoyed where we were at?
Jess: 29:22
One thing I use with athletes. So whether you're working towards like a 10K, a half marathon, a marathon, whatever it is, you have a certain percentage of your mileage that has run easy. It is zone two. You can have a conversation while you're running, subjectively boring to people a lot of times and like, oh my God, Jessica, why do I have to do this? And so I like to talk about every one of those runs is a deposit into that bank account that's then eventually going to reach that monetary goal of you running that race. Every time that you perform that behavior, practice, that habit that works you towards that goal, you're making a deposit towards achieving that goal. You have that frequency piece, that consistency piece.
Ali: 30:04
Consistency and repetition are the biggest things that our brain latches onto. When you think of how you learned to ride a bike, you didn't just get on a bike and start going and, you know, go down the steepest hill in your neighborhood and it was easy. Right, it was consistency and repetition. You probably fell off quite a few times. You had to finally get to a point where you felt like you had that balance. It became easy and now you can get on a bike and just ride whenever you want because you already have that mind-body connection. Same thing with any goal Consistency and repetition is how we build those habits into lifelong behaviors.
Jess: 30:38
And then it goes back to the efficacy piece too. Right With self-efficacy, it's how do you respond in the face of adversity? You learn to ride a bike and you fall down. The first time you fall down, you pick yourself back up and keep going. When you're working towards goals, you're going to effectively fall down, you're going to stumble. You're going to have life stuff come up and be like hey, how bad do you want it? And it's navigating those to come back to you every time. You practice that habit that works you towards that goal. Deposit in the bank account.
Ali: 31:03
Now I love to say the phrase your biggest breakthroughs happen right after the biggest breakdown. You always have this pivotal moment where your mind, your body, your life, whatever says no, this is too much, too much change. I don't like it. I want to go back to my comfort zone. I want to go back to what I know, even if what I know is not beneficial. I want to go back because that's what I'm safe and our bodies love safety and blogging. It's all they look for. When we hit that breakdown. It's actually a really incredible moment that says holy shit, I'm changing, I'm evolving, like this shit's working right. Because I'm feeling this intense pressure to break down. Something good is on the other side of this hill.
Jess: 31:42
And that's a really hard thing to recognize.
Ali: 31:44
Yeah, there's only one way out is to go through, and I think while we're just talking pursuit of goals.
Jess: 31:50
I'm very goal oriented, but one thing that it took me a long time to recognize in this pursuit, where we're like here, you're going to set this goal, now go through this acronym of smarter goals we create the best version of ourselves in the pursuit of the goal. The goal and the achievement of the goal itself doesn't achieve it Because you're going to spend the majority of your time like 99.9% of your time pursuing your goals and so little of your time actually achieving them. So if you set a goal and you hate every action you have to take to reach that goal and you're spending your majority of your time doing that, is it worth it Finding joy in the process?
Ali: 32:28
of that goal. Yes, I think so many people need to hear that because, especially I feel like, more now than ever, we're in this mentality of well, once I hit the goal, then everything will be happy, perfect.
Jess: 32:40
Yeah, with Sturdy Girl we talk a lot about the body image piece and that confidence piece of when I lose 10 pounds, then I will blah, blah, blah, Like when this happens, when I get this, then things will be better.
Ali: 32:53
Versus if you're living most of your life pursuing that goal. During the pursuing piece, how's your life look? Are you enjoying it? Is it pleasurable? Is it allowing you to be present with your family? Is it giving you experiences that you're excited to look back on? Or are you absolutely miserable? Because, no matter what that outcome is, it's either not going to be realistic long-term it maybe is not tangible in the first place or you just wasted six months, a year, five years, trying to get to a goal that isn't even satisfactory, when you could have been living your life.
Jess: 33:26
This is more in terms of like living the life that you want to and setting these goals that create the life you want.
Ali: 33:32
Absolutely, Because most of the people, I would argue, that are listening to this are looking for ways to make their life more exciting, more meaningful, happier, to feel more content, feel more at peace. While we all have these huge dreams that we might want to go after and this way of goal setting is definitely going to help you get there I feel like the meat of this right, the like really juicy part of this, is the goals that have like the story behind them, the goals that aren't just a oh, I want this career so I can make more money. No, it's the goals that's like I want to experience this thing. It keeps making me think of the Barbie movie, so I'm sorry that I'm bringing this as an analogy, but it's like I watched it on the flight back from Australia. That would be why it's top of mind for me. There's a quote that's like close your eyes and feel, literally just feel. What are you blocking yourself from feeling right now? And if that is not an overwhelming like positive feeling, great, let's figure out what the goal is to shift that.
Jess: 34:27
But I mean that's mindfulness? Is that pausing in the moment to assess how am I feeling? What am I feeling? What am I not letting myself feel? Yeah, and which is the reflection piece again Gosh, people listening to this would be like just guy, I thought there was going to be actionable things. We're like take the time to reflect and feel right these things down, feel your feelings and they're like no, I don't want to, I want you to tell me how I can set the school and smash it. Come on Like I want our marathon next year, but like we can do that too. Yeah, I think just to kind of reiterate, as we talk smarter goals, as we talk reflection and the feeling pieces and coming back to reminding yourself of why you want to do something, because that why is going to be the biggest motivator and I don't use motivation in the like discipline over motivation or whatever that BS is. But if you can fall back on that why on the days when you're tired or on the days when it's not as exciting to pursue that goal, it's a lot easier than if it's just some arbitrary goal that you plucked out of a hat.
Ali: 35:25
Purpose is your intention.
Jess: 35:27
Yeah, it's working towards that future self, that who you want to be, how you want to feel. If you were to write yourself into a book, how would you describe that character, your character, how would you describe that future version of you? And to that point, just a reminder of spending most of your time in pursuit of your goals versus actually achieving them. So find a way to enjoy them. But I wanted to talk just a little bit more about actually writing down those goals, kind of like we talked about that. We talked about that reverse engineering, and to give a little more context into that. I just want you to think of it as like a brain dump is much like choosing the life that you want to live and saying, hey, big, broad question, what do you want? Brain, dump it out. If I want to run a sub two hour half marathon, I need to work on pacing at less than 904 mile and I need to run my peak week at this many miles, because I already have a base of this. I need to get running shoes. I need to hire a coach, get an anti-chafed stick so I don't shave my thighs like crazy. I need to figure out what good rest and recovery looks like? What does good fueling look like? Right, you have all of these things. It's a 909 mile, not a 904. It isn't what you need to run faster than for a sub two, but it's looking at those and saying here are all the things that I need to do and or achieve. Are these a task? Is this a benchmark? Is this a daily habit? And breaking those things down into categories, more or less, can make these something that we are able to work towards. So, in order to run a sub two hour half marathon, I need to, and then brain dump. And then going back to that reflection piece, because this is like the star, star star of the whole episode. Going back to the reflection, what does that reflection look like? Are you checking in at the end of each week? If you have a coach, you probably are checking in each week and they're asking you these questions how did training go? What went well? What didn't? Have the questions to be able to evaluate your progress in a neutral way what was the best part of the worst part? What can I change? Is there anything that needs to be changed? Is it just continue to stay consistent? Keep the same frequency looking at those pieces, because that's going to again help us work towards those goals.
Ali: 37:33
And and leave space to even write down, like OK, what do I not know right now? What knowledge do I need or what further education do I need in order to accomplish this goal? You might not know everything, or you might not know anything about what you're trying to accomplish, but that can be kind of the fun part is the investigation, right, it's the learning experience you know to even pivot off of that. It's understanding, like OK, who will you need to become in order to achieve what you want to achieve? Me and Jess have both talked a lot about like being overdoing, right. When we think of goals, we think again action and results. We're thinking what am I supposed to do in order to get from A to B? But we're not adding in the biggest factor, which is who are we being in the middle of it?
Jess: 38:17
The kind of qualities are you displaying? Who are you showing up as?
Ali: 38:21
What does that like version of you look like, feel like, act like, talk like? What are their?
Jess: 38:27
values, like that's a really big piece here when we talk about choosing our word, which I don't have one for 2024 yet Haven't gotten that far. The word that we choose can also be a reflection on what are our three or so core values, and then pulling from that, because that's a really big piece of this too. But that also ties into, like your why and deciding your why. That why it's going to be tied into those core values.
Ali: 38:49
You've said this earlier A lot of that change happens when you do allow yourself to realize like your core values might be innate right, they might always stay the same, but who you are can evolve. I always say, like there's a reason and a season, and that might be for a friendship, that might be for a relationship, a career, a place that you live like. Who you are evolves and changes with every season of life. So, like embracing that identity shift as you're stepping into this new year, right, because if you stay the same person, you can achieve the goals that you want Nothing changes, if nothing changes. Amen the old. You didn't achieve these goals for a reason not because they weren't capable of doing them, because they didn't want to be anyone different.
Jess: 39:31
So I think, to just kind of wrap all of this up, there were two other things that I wanted to mention. And then I think that we've really done a good job of talking, goal setting, reflection, all of those pieces. One question to ask yourself as you're setting these goals is defining what done looks like. What is achieving the goal look like. So, when we talked about smarter goals and it being specific, how will you know you've achieved your goal? So just make sure that that's a piece of it, because that's also going to tie back into the line. And then the other thing is, when we're setting goals, and we started out with the really, really big what do you want? What do you want your life to look like? Feel like, smell like. Where do you want to live? What do you want to do? What does your day look like? If you're going to have your best 2024, what does your best day in 2024 look like? A lot of times, when you like Google how to set good goals, or whatever they talk about setting different goals in different areas of your life a physical goal, a fitness goal, a finance goal, a relationship goal and one reminder I just went about out there you can choose to do whatever the heck you want. But it's hard to set goals in different areas of your life because you are one human with a finite amount of energy to give every single day. There's a book called essentialism that I love to refer back to, and the cover of the book. There are two circles and one circle has one arrow that's really long and it is one person in pursuit of one thing, so all of their energy goes towards that one thing, so the arrow is longer. The other circle has 10 different arrows. Coming off of every single arrow is the short little stumpy arrow all around it, because you're giving your 100% of your energy in a day to 10 different things and you're making teeny tiny little bits of progress towards those things. So, while it might be tempting to set a goal for you know I'm going to set a financial goal because I want to max out my Roth IRA next year Great, that doesn't take a lot of action you set it on auto deposit or whatever, and you can have that goal. And if there's a physical goal, just knowing that you're pulling from a singular human's source of energy, consider how much energy you have to give to what you want to work towards.
Ali: 41:32
Something we do in my alpha alignment programming is I call it the wheel of life, exactly what you're talking about. It is a wheel that literally says like relationships and social and cooking and career, and it's all the pieces that make up your life, and you basically decide okay, where, where do I feel nourished and where do I feel less nourished. And wherever you feel less nourished is maybe the points where you need to focus right. You need to prioritize right now, at this season. But the beauty of a wheel is that it can always turn. So once you've nourished a little bit more of that one goal great. You can then spend more time and energy on a different goal, on a different piece of your life that maybe needs nourishment at that season. Putting all of our eggs in every single basket doesn't get you anywhere. Allow yourself to prioritize a few pieces, knowing that you can always come back and conquer other pieces when, when that time comes, when it becomes more of the priority.
Jess: 42:29
It's just a whole lot of effing around and finding out. To be honest, that's what it comes down to. That's our message for for this whole episode. Sorry, it was supposed to be way more tangible, guys, but that's all we have to say after round. And find out, because you have this one life to live and we're not having fun doing it.
Ali: 42:45
I even look back and again my view so much comes from living in the Midwest and I've moved away and I've moved back. It looks at okay, if you look over the last five years of your life and you've maybe done some really cool shit, you've maybe grown as a person, you've maybe evolved, but if you look back over the last five years of your life, a lot of it has probably stayed the same, if not the majority of it is the exact same as it was five years ago. Are you happy and content with the things that have stayed consistent or the things that have stayed consistent, the things that are causing you frustration and discontentment? That is the biggest piece. Here is again yeah, fuck around and find out, live in a messy life but decide. Okay, what factors am I just like discontent with? Those are the things I'm going to prioritize as I break down my goals.
Jess: 43:29
This is how to have your best here, because you get to define it.
Ali: 43:32
To wrap up, what you're just saying is, when you're looking at 2024 and you've reflected on the last year and you're writing down all the things that you want for the new year, it might get overwhelming to be like, holy crap, there's so many things that I want, or there's so many things I want to try to do, or how you almost get like you feel stuck. It's the paralysis Analysis paralysis, yeah, reading my brain over here. Pick one or two, get really clear on one or two that are like what I always call are like your big motivator, or those are like your obsessions right now. They're things that are realistic and attainable and all the smarter goal mentality of the next six months to a year. What are the one or two things that you are obsessed with doing this year? Let's work towards those first, and then other things might come as a byproduct.
Jess: 44:18
Don't go hog wild. You can make the list, but one or two big goals, the things that relate back to the why, relate back to the values, all of those things. All right, allie, you have joined me for 25% of Sturdy Girls season one episodes and it just warms my heart so much to have you join and be such a fantastic counterpart to how I think, to expound on things that enrich our listeners lives even more. So thank you for joining us, thank, you for having me.
Ali: 44:47
I think a really cool reflection over this year is like you and I had chatted a few times in the DMs but we had never actually gotten on a call.
Jess: 44:55
And then we got on a call and I'm like have I known you my whole life?
Ali: 44:57
because this is just this is great and I think a lot of really incredible things are going to open up in 2024. And I'm excited to see what the words are that both of us pick Be sure to talk about.
Jess: 45:08
All right friends. Thank you so much for an amazing first season. So glad you've been here. Stay sturdy, and we will talk to you in January.