S2:E4 | Setting Goals That Get Accomplished
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Jeremy: [00:00:00] A goal without direction is just a wish. In this episode we're diving into how to set goals that are not just achievable but aligned with your purpose and vision.
What's good? What's good? It's the Jeremy Haselwood Show. What's good, what's good? Let's get ready to go. Welcome to the Jeremy Haselwood Show. Plug in. Turn it up. Let's go. Hey, hey. Welcome to the Jeremy Haselwood Show.
Welcome to this episode where we are talking all about setting goals that get accomplished. Before we get started make sure you tap click or smash the follow or subscribe button to make sure you'll be notified when each new episode drops.
This is season two where you're learning all about life transformation and personal development. Each season of my [00:01:00] show covers a different topic. My goal is to spark curiosity, build community, inspire action, and deepen our understanding of the world around us. Now, today is all about goal setting. And if you're listening to this and you are at a place in your life where you want to make some choices about what the next week, next month, next year, or just next phase of your life is going to look like.
This is going to be a great episode for you. First, I want to share a little story about me as it pertains to goal setting. And this goes back to when I was in grad school, we had a journal assignment where we were supposed to write about our goals and some of the things that we wanted to accomplish.
And I was really excited about this because there were a lot of things that I wanted to do. And I bring this up because over the past several years, I've talked to many people and just said, what do you want to do? a lot of times it's not just one or two things. Sometimes it's five or six things.
So if you're one of those people, you'll be able to relate to what I'm about to say. So this journal entry, I wrote down here's everything that I want to do and I don't remember the whole [00:02:00] list, but I know it included some things like running my own business voicing cartoon characters, releasing another album public speaking and then there were like some other things that weren't necessarily related.
So it's like I was able to get all of that out within this journal listing. And when I got the assignment back, the professor had. Marked it all up with red ink and had a note on there that said come see me in my office so I was a little perplexed by that and I didn't understand What the questions were about I thought that I had followed the assignment correctly So I scheduled some time with him went into his office and met with him and he said Jeremy Let's talk about your journal entry and let's talk about your goals.
Tell me what you want to do. So I reiterated some of the things that were in my journal entry. he said, okay, here's the problem that I see. You want to do too many things and there's no way that you're going to be able to accomplish these all in one lifetime. And that kind of set me back a little bit because I've always been of that [00:03:00] mindset that.
is believing if I can accomplish it, then I can put in the work and I can accomplish anything. the confidence, the drive, the optimism that I have. then he started to just break down the reason why it wasn't possible. And it made a lot of sense to me it didn't necessarily kill my dreams.
But I'll unpack that a little more in a moment. So even as you're listening to this don't feel like if there's 1520 different things you want to do before you leave this earth, that this is a dream. killing episode. It's not. So what he told me was you have all these things that you want to do, and you're not going to be able to do all of these, especially with the way that you have them listed out.
There's no direction here. You just listed everything that you want to do, but there's no timelines. There's no way to measure a lot of these things that you put here. You didn't put any measurements down. So he said, can I give you some advice? I was like, yeah, He said, if I were you, I would rank these in the order that are most important to you in terms of what you really want to accomplish and then put some [00:04:00] time boundaries around them.
So if the first one is and I don't remember what it was, but as an example to write a book, give yourself a deadline for that. And whether it's two years, a year, whatever that is, give yourself a timeline. And work towards that timeline at the end of that timeline evaluate where you are with that particular goal.
let's pause for a minute. When I retell this story and I share this, a piece that I took from that is if you haven't hit that goal by that timeline, it doesn't necessarily mean that You need to take that goal off the table. What I would recommend to you is that if you don't hit that goal and you hit the timeline, evaluate where you are in the process, evaluate if it's still a passion, if it still stirs you, and if you're willing to put off the other goals that you have in order to finish up accomplishing this one, but reset or extend a timeline that actually has a deadline on it and give yourself a little bit more time.
Jumping back to the story. So he said, give yourself a time and whether you've accomplished it or not, Take it off the table and then go [00:05:00] after the next one and give yourself a timeline with that. Give it everything you have and go after the next one and go after the next one. Go after the next one on and on.
So what that taught me was number one, I didn't really have focus on my goals. There were just a lot of things that I wanted to do. There were like wishes. I wish that I could do this. I wish that I could do that. But there was no structure or plan in order for me to actually accomplish that. one of the things that I ended up doing after I graduated school and some of those goals that I did go after is I followed that advice.
And what that allowed me to do was instead of putting like 10 percent of my focus here, 15 here, 20 percent here, 5 percent here. I could put a hundred percent of my focus into that one particular goal that I was looking to accomplish. And that is the way that I still operate today. So since that time period, I've put out two books, I've got this podcast, I've started my company.
There's a lot of things that I've really put my mind to and just gone over. All in on it. And I've given [00:06:00] myself timelines and I've had some failures as well. I had an online community called fundraisers unite and I gave myself three years for that to really take off and I hit that three year mark and I wasn't quite there.
So I extended it another six months and I still didn't get to where I wanted to be with that online community. So I pulled the plug on it and it sucked, but I knew that I couldn't continue to put time and effort and resources into that when there were other things that I also wanted to accomplish. Those goals and those timelines really helped to keep me accountable. So that's really how I'm going to open up this podcast, but let's talk a little bit about. Goals The purpose of goals is to give you direction and focus in your life.
If you just have a bunch of wishes, but you don't have that focus or direction, you're just wandering aimlessly about which goal is giving you the most at that time. Some goals take longer for you to accomplish than others. So if you're getting traction in one, then that might get a little more attention while you're still trying to work on other goals.
When you look at goals and you start to break them down, like focus on one thing at a time, [00:07:00] get that focus and direction that you need. Let's talk about a goal framework. been doing this kind of work on yourself for a long time, then this Framework is no stranger to you. And this is the smart goal framework. And I love this framework. I've tried to create variations myself for this because I don't necessarily like to take existing models and just reuse them. But this is one case and one model that just works so well that I don't need to try to change it.
The only thing that I did change instead of smart S M a R T.
I changed it to SMRT. So the regular SMART, S M A R T, is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. I choose to use SMRT, which can still be SMART goals or maybe SMERT. It's still SMART to me, which is just taking the attainable out, because sometimes there can be confusion and is something attainable versus realistic.
So I'm specific, measurable, realistic, and time bound. So let's break these down a little bit, even relating it back to my experience. [00:08:00] Specific, this piece of the SMART goal is, it doesn't really leave room for gray area. You know what you want and you go after it measurable. How do you know whether or not you accomplished your goal? Can you measure the progress of your goal three months in a year? And however long the goal is, can you measure the success of your goal? If you can't measure the success, then it's probably not a good goal.
Realistic. And this is one where overly optimistic people might struggle with because
kind of
Jeremy: like I was and still am to a degree. Like I feel like everything's realistic. If I put it in my mind, I can go after it. I can achieve it.
But let me give you an example of what may not be realistic. Let's say one of your goals is to lose weight. And you're trying to lose 50 pounds in two weeks. That's not a very realistic goal. Is it possible? I guess it depends on what your overall body weight is and what kind of torture you put yourself through in the next two weeks, but it's not a very realistic goal.
So when you think about your goals and goal setting, [00:09:00] Really challenge yourself and think, is this realistic? And that doesn't mean you shouldn't stretch yourself because sometimes realistic means we have to think a little bit beyond what we believe is possible for us. Like I'm always going to stretch myself and I challenge you to do the same.
Whatever you think in your mind is possible. Go a step further and see if you can take it just a little bit more And set that as the way that you gauge whether something is realistic or not. And then the last letter, T for time bound. And this one is so important to the SMART goals, because if you don't put an end date to when you're trying to accomplish this goal, You're just going to go after it aimlessly for the rest of your life. for some people, okay. I can understand the philosophy of never give up on your dreams or never give up on your goals.
And that's cool. But also what I found is if you have a lot of goals that you're trying to accomplish, then you have to put some time limits around it. But also when you put time limits, it creates an urgency and a deadline. Think about it like this, and I may have shared this in a previous [00:10:00] podcast, if you're running a race and there's no finish line, you're just running, you're just getting tired you don't know when you've gotten there.
So one, it's not measurable, but then two, there's no end to it. So you're just wondering aimlessly. So when you're creating a goal, make sure that it is specific. Make sure it's measurable, it's realistic, and it's time bound. Giving you some little examples of how this might look if you're setting a goal.
Going back to like weight loss for example. Let's say if we're using the SMART goal framework, I want to lose 50 pounds by May 31st. That's a very short goal, but it's specific. You want to lose 50 pounds. It's measurable because either you lose 50 pounds or you don't. Realistic depending on.
What time of year is by May 31st should be realistic for you and given your weight size and then time bound you put a date on it. May 31st. So that is an example of a smart goal. Another one might be starting a business like I want to start a business developing an app that [00:11:00] does XYZ again be very specific about what you want to do by X date October 1st, 2027.
So you've got everything there. It's specific, it's measurable, whether you achieved it or not, it's realistic and it's time bound. In the business world, you can even look at like gains. So if you're trying to increase customer acquisition or reduce your costs per order or something like that, you put like the specifics around it, reducing costs per order by 10 percent by the end of Q2 of whatever year, so All of these fall into that category of a SMART goal. so as I think about this SMART goal process, when I did that journal entry, Back in grad school, I did not apply this process. I just put my goals. They weren't necessarily specific. They were measurable to some degree. Either I had accomplished them or I didn't realistic maybe, or maybe not. And there definitely wasn't anything time bound on it.
So what I ended up doing from that, and I don't recall all the details exactly, but I know [00:12:00] I took each of those goals out and again, there were probably 10 of them and I broke each of them down into smart goals. And I even put. all 10 of them. So I'm like, okay, if I'm mapping these 10 goals out over the course of my life, Lord willing, I live long enough to accomplish these.
This one is going to take two years, this one, six months, this one, four years. And so I really mapped out in an odd way, like maybe the next 20 years of my life. what I found is once I started really going in on the first goal and dipping a hundred percent into it, I didn't necessarily have the desire to accomplish some of those other goals that I had on my list.
Like I had changed, I had evolved a little bit. My personal priorities shifted a little bit. It was very helpful in prioritizing the goals because ultimately what that taught me is some of these goals that I had in my life and some of the goals you have in your life are really relevant to you right now with what you're feeling, what you're going through in life, but they may not necessarily be a part of your purpose.
And that is the big piece when we look at accomplishing goals. And that's something that I want to challenge you on. When you're creating goals, [00:13:00] evaluating whether or not those aligned with your purpose, or if it's just something nice to do. I think one of my goals was to do improv and I actually did a couple years of improv.
that didn't necessarily align with my life's purpose, but I gained some tools with speaking and I enjoyed it, but I didn't continue with it because it just wasn't, Where I was going in life and that time that I was putting into improv, I could put into other areas of life.
and when it comes to goal setting and making sure that it aligns with your purpose, I go a little bit deeper in my book, because in this podcast, we're really just talking about the framework of goals. In my book, I help you set up a personal vision statement, and you're also doing that other work like we, you've heard on the other episodes of this season, we're really diving in doing some self discovery work, clearing up distractions.
But in the book, writing your personal vision statement, it gives you more of a sense of who you are and where you're going. So that when you do write goals, you can either say, yes, this goal aligns to my identity, to my vision. And if you've come [00:14:00] to a point where you've really discovered your purpose, then yes, this aligns with my purpose.
So I'm prioritizing this one. You may have other goals that don't align with your purpose and that's okay. Again, like The improv piece for me didn't necessarily align with my purpose, but it was something that I always wanted to do. And I thought it would be fun and I'm glad I did it, but that's something that I would deprioritize because it's not closer to my purpose.
So as you're writing down your goals and you can have multiple goals, I hope you don't take away from this that you can only have one goal. Like you can have multiple goals, just put some boundaries around them, put some timelines around them and be very specific. Follow that smart goal model. Now we talked about the five forces of balance in my first episode of this season. And if you don't recall, if you haven't listened to it, there's five forces of balance, which are your family force, professional force, health force, spiritual force, and personal force. And I picked these apart and I go in depth in that first episode, but these are basically five different areas of your life.
Where you're trying to achieve balance in these in order [00:15:00] to live a happier, more joyful, more intent life. And one of the things that I do every year in January, it's usually early. Instead of writing new year's resolutions, I usually write smart goals for each of these different areas of my life. So for my family force, my goal for whatever the year is to do.
XYZ and I follow the smart goal format and professional. My goal is to do, and I write that out. So if you've listened to the first episode or even go back and listen to it and refamiliarize yourself with these five forces of balance, but I would challenge you also to write out. A goal for each of these for each year, like again, it's level sets my year and I check back in on it and I'll probably do another podcast episode in the future and walk you through this, So I'll just leave that there for now. We have a few minutes left of this episode. So here's an exercise I want you to do. I want you to write down one big goal using the smart goal format and break that goal down into three smaller steps [00:16:00] that you can accomplish this week. So this goal may be something that you're trying to accomplish this month or this quarter or this year, but really write that out, think about it.
And this is going to be more than like a statement. My goal is to do X, Y, Z. Or if it is let's say maybe your goal is to lose seven pounds by the end of the month. So your goal this week is to, I'm going to eat, right? I'm going to go to the gym on this day. And if you're saying eat right, be specific, I'm going to have this meal.
So break that down into three different steps let that be your exercise for the week. And then I also want to leave you with three reflective questions. Again, this mirror is my book at the end of each chapter, I asked some reflective questions and it's great for journaling just open up your mind and helping you get that focus that you need as you're doing this life transformation work.
The first question is, what is one big goal that you want to achieve this year? And that might be the same goal that you just wrote down for your exercise that you're going to do this week. The next question is, how does this goal align with your purpose and [00:17:00] values? Again, this is the piece that challenges you.
You have this goal, but how does it align? And that's what we want to understand. Not that I have this goal. We want to be intent about the goals that we make to ensure that those big goals really align with our values, our purpose, and where we're going. And then the third question is, what is one small step that you can take this week To move closer to that goal now I know these three questions sounds similar to the practice exercise, but it may be a different goal that you're using here So that's today's episode. I hope that you took something away from this. I'd love to hear your comments and feedback. So make sure you either reach out to me on social media or if you're watching this on YouTube, leave comments there. But let me know what breakthroughs you have because I'd love to hear that the work that I'm doing actually does make a difference.
So I want to thank you for tuning into the Jeremy Hazelwood show. If you enjoyed today's episode, Don't forget to follow or subscribe so you're always up to date when the latest episode drops. Until next time, keep following your dreams to find your purpose. [00:18:00]
