00:00 

Hey, you are listening to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 17, "Goaling." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Okay, so here we go today I just...do you ever have those days where you just wake up and you're just buzzed with life? I just had one of those days. I woke up early this morning before my alarm and my brain just started thinking about all these great things that I wanted to do and so I got up earlier than normal. I got some extra stuff done I went to pick up the girl that I exercised with in the morning and I was like "hey," and she's like "what is up with you today?" And I'm like, "I don't know! I just am having one of those days where I just feel a little bit buzzed with how life is and how great it is, and with where I'm going what I'm doing." So I just I think it's terrific. 

01:01 

I'm so happy to be here today with you because I love what we're gonna be talking about today. We're gonna be talking about goaling. Now some people call this setting goals, but I just kind of got into calling it goaling and I kind of like that. So a few days ago, I was looking through some old notebooks of notes that I had taken with talks and things that I listened to. And I had listened to a talk from Paul Martinelli and he was talking about the five most important mistakes that people make when they set goals. And as I was reading through my notes, I'm like, "this is good stuff I want to share this." So my content today is coming from Paul Martinelli's Five mistakes. I've added a lot of a lot of my own ideas and a lot of content but the basic five mistakes come from Paul Martinelli and I want to give him credit for that because he's an incredible Incredible teacher of mindset and how to move forward in life. 

01:53 

So here we go. We're gonna start off today by talking about successful people, because successful people really work at being successful, and this includes they are constantly intentionally growing by setting goals. Because setting goals is all about dreaming of things that don't exist yet. And this is why they're so successful beyond the normal person, because they dream of things that the normal person doesn't dream of. You see, setting goals is about creating our future, even though we may not understand the hows. We're actually creating our future with our imagination and our personal inspiration that we receive. And if we can learn to follow and to seek this intuition, we can start tapping into our potential and creating our future. It's all about creating something that doesn't exist. And this is what goals are about. It's about tapping into our whys. having a purpose for where we're going and where we want to go. So let's talk about these five mistakes that Paul Martinelli talks about that people often make when they're goaling. 

03:07 

The first mistake: we set goals we know that we can achieve. Now I know my to-do list oftentimes has things on it that I just think "well, I'm going to do that anyway," right? But I put them on there. That's not really a goal. It's something that I know that I can achieve. A goal is something that's going to stretch us and push us. And the thing is oftentimes if I'm going to set a goal that I know I can achieve, very often I will end up quitting this goal because the reward is not great, and yet I'm still going through pain to accomplish it, I'm going to quit. And it ends up not being worth the price that I'm paying because the payoff is not big enough. 

03:48 

And so our goals need to be big. They need to be beyond what we really think that we can achieve, all right? If I've got 50 pounds to lose and I set a goal to lose five, sometimes the pain of going through that is not going to be worth the payoff of five pounds because I may not even notice that I've gained five there that or that I've lost five pounds. It may not be big enough and I'm going to end up quitting. When we set goals we have to start stepping outside of our comfort zone. 

04:19 

And this is scary because it's a new experience and our primitive brain or we may want to call it our survival brain, will fight anything that's new. And that's just what our primitive brain does. It sees something new and it fights against it. That's why we struggle so much with changing behaviors. Our primitive brain is trying to protect us from things that are scary and new. 

04:46 

But this is the deal. We can't either step forward into growth or we can step back into safety. The primitive brain votes for safety every single time. But our prefrontal brain is what sees the future and sees the potential and this sees the growth and it sees what is best for us in the long run. And this is where we dream and this is where we create this future that we want to live. 

05:12 

So to overcome this primitive brain our goals must excite us they must inspire us which means they need to be something that is backed by a big huge why. We have to understand why do I want this goal and we need to start tapping into that. When our why is big enough with a super big goal we will tend to move forward with more umph than if we don't have a big why and the goals leave us uninspired. So mistake number one we set goals that we know we can achieve. Alright. We have got to start challenging the status quo here. 

05:51 

The second mistake that we often make when setting goals is we set goals based on what we think we can do according to a plan that makes a lot of sense to us. And although that would seem like it would work, it's backwards. We have to dream first and then we have to start going to reach that dream. The purpose of setting goals is growth. It's moving toward a greater and a more amazing me. And if I'm not dreaming outside of myself, then I am not dreaming big enough. So I have to start imagining an unimaginable future. And I have to start setting goals to achieve that. I need to put my emotional involvement into my goal or my dream and not my predictable day to day plan. 

06:44 

Because you know what? Life is always changing. Circumstances and people and ideas are always changing. And I can't count on those things. But guess what? Here's the secret. I can count on my dreams. That may seem crazy, but I can count on my dreams. And so rather than setting goals on what I think I can do, I need to set goals on what I dream about and what I have no idea how to do. So I just need to learn to dream bigger. 

07:17 

The third mistake we make: we think we know exactly how it will play out before we set the goal. Major goal-setting rule. It is okay not to know how to get there. Sometimes our dreams are so big, we just can't even start wrapping our head around how we're going to get there and what even this first step is. I think that's awesome, by the way. I think it's awesome to start putting us there. But understanding that moving forward just a step at a time as it is revealed to us, that's going to get us there. It's like the analogy that I've heard all my life growing up of stepping into the dark and then God lights the way of that step. Sometimes we just have to start moving. 

08:07 

As I look at wanting to move this business forward and the place that I want to go with this, I don't even get it. I can't even fathom how it's going to work and how I get there because I don't have a business degree, I don't have a marketing degree, I don't have experience in these things, but I do know that I have passion for what I'm doing here and I have a desire to share this with other people and to help other people have better, greater lives. That passion is driving me forward. 

08:40 

When I wanted to start this podcast, I had no idea how to even begin. The how was not even there, and yet the podcast is part of my goal, my ultimate goal of what I want for my business. And so I just started doing things, and some of the things I did were like, "well that was stupid, that didn't even work." But it let me know what didn't work. And it started moving me into a place where pretty soon I'm like, "oh, I just recorded my first podcast." And I ended up throwing that one away because of other things that happened, but I figured out how to record it. I figured out how to use the software, and then I figured out how to get it where it needed to go, and how to get it on my website, and I figured all these things out. I had no idea when I first started, but moving forward a step at a time revealed it to me. 

09:31 

It was like that light. I mean, I just took a step, and then God lit where my foot was, and I could say, "oh, right place" or "wrong place." And then I would take another step, and then the light would come and I would go, "oh, right place" or  "wrong place." I mean, I knew what was going, I could see it once I did it. I love this quote from Paul Martinelli when he gave this talk. He said, "the only thing worse than an excuse is a good excuse." And you know what, I live this. I live this. I'm learning not to live this, right? I'm learning that not knowing how to create a podcast is no excuse at all. Would it be a good excuse? Yeah, it'd be a good excuse. "I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to market. I don't know how to do this." Well, OK, so that's a good excuse, but I don't want a good excuse. I don't even want an excuse. I just need to start moving forward. So my current knowledge and skills don't qualify me. Otherwise, I would already be doing it, and it wouldn't be a dream goal, right? 

10:32 

So my goal of having my business grow into the place where I can help thousands of people find a better way to think and a better way to live. You know, my current knowledge and skills don't qualify me to run that business yet. Because if they did, I would already have that business. It wouldn't be a dream goal, but it is my dream goal because I will get that knowledge and I will get those skills. 

10:58 

This is the deal, the Wright Brothers. They didn't have pilot's licenses before they began to fly. You know what they had? They had a dream and they figured it out. And even though they didn't have all the resources and the funding that other flying hopefuls had, they didn't wait for funding or they didn't wait for the guy with a PhD to help them figure it out. They just got to work on it and they kept moving forward one dark step at a time. And we all know how that worked out for them. They are icons in our history because they figured out how to fly. They figured it out. They didn't know what they were doing, but they figured it out as they went along and that's where we need to go. 

11:46 

We have to suspend the requirement of knowing how before we start moving forward. You know the phrase "failing forward?" It is completely applicable here. We fail, we figure out what we did wrong, we fail, we figure it out, and we do that over and over and over. And my process of getting my business where it is right now has been a process of that. Trying something doesn't work. Try something else doesn't work. Try something else. Oh, work this time. Try something else doesn't work. Try something else. I mean it's just a process over and over and over and eventually we'll figure it out. 

12:27 

The thing is we don't know how to do anything until we actually do it. A baby doesn't know how to walk until they do it. This is a really simple example, I know, and I often go back to this but it's so simple to see here. I'm sure in their beginning minds and their crawling bodies they see people walking and they have no idea what's going on. They just think that looks cool. "I want to get around like that." So they try standing and then they start realizing there's this thing called balance. They may not have the word balance in their head but they realize that standing is not as simple as it was and the idea of balance didn't even exist in their mind before they tried to stand. Isn't that fascinating to think about? 

13:18 

The idea of this challenge they were going to have didn't even exist before they tried to stand. But then they tried to stand and they realized "oh balance is a thing" and then they figured out that balance and then they got to the point where they could stand. They just kept trying and trying until they figured out balance and then they could stand and then they tried moving a leg because they saw that that's what other people did. And guess what, they fell over because all of a sudden the balance that they knew didn't work anymore. Balance became a whole new thing and their whole idea of balance, something they thought they had mastered, all of a sudden didn't make sense anymore and they had to figure out a whole new way to balance. 

14:05 

The thing is that's a basic and a really easy example, but it works because can't you see the progress in it? And this process is the exact same for us. We do it and if it works then we can do it. If it doesn't work then we start learning and figuring out things that we didn't know before we tried and we give it another go. 

14:31 

This is where our growth mindset that we talked about a few times ago comes in really really handy. That idea that that it's not weakness to not know and to have to figure it out. It is so important here that we start tapping into our why and not our how. The baby wants to walk because she sees that there's a better way to get around, although she has no idea how people do that. But the baby figures it out by doing. But our why is what's going to keep us moving. So we need to find a way to  stay committed to our why. 

15:16 

So again, realize that we probably won't know the how at first and maybe not until the last two or three steps, and maybe all of a sudden one day we'll be in our living our impossible dream and we'll be completely shocked that we're there. Won't that be fun? I am so excited to get to that point that all of a sudden I go, "hey, this was my impossible dream. And here I am living the dream," right? I'm so excited for that. And I think it's possible for every single one of us to be living the dream. 

15:53 

Alright, fourth mistake: we question our right to be, to do, or to have what we want. Basically, we're questioning our worthiness. We question our worthiness of achieving such lofty dreams. What we should be questioning is whether the goal is worthy of me. You see, I'm trading my life, my energy, and my time for this goal. Is this goal worthy of those three things? Is it worthy of the price of my life and my energy and my time? Ultimately, I can only add values to others when I capitalize on my talents and I use those talents to serve God. If I tap into my God-given potential, I must come to understand my true worth and reach for things that my soul cries out for that seem unreasonable or unimaginable to my mortal brain. 

17:00 

And I believe that. I believe that our dreams are our soul crying out, wanting to grow, wanting to become what they were meant to become. I have every right and I have every responsibility to seek to fulfill my potential, whatever it may be, and to bless the world with what my soul dreams of. Because my soul is tapping into my potential. And this means that I must realize that I have every right to seek my dreams and get what I want. I cannot fully bless others until I fully come into myself by reaching beyond myself. 

17:47 

Mistake number five: we think the purpose of the goal is to get the goal. Not so. That is so not right. The purpose of the goal is to cause us to grow and become the person who can do and have great things. The purpose of the goal is to grow me into my potential. The purpose of that dream is for me to tap into my potential and to become what I am meant to be. I love that Carly Fiorina says that potential is the greatest untapped resource in the world. Isn't that a beautiful thought? I'm sure positive that if we will tap into our true potential that even our most unimaginable dreams that we have right now will someday seem small and easy. If we can just tap into that and someday these dreams will seem easy. When we look back someday at the things that used to seem so big to us we'll probably laugh a little bit at how naive we were. 

19:02 

So it's like these middle school kids I work with. To them their problems are huge because that's where they are in life right now. They're humans who don't have as much experience and we as adults who have a lot more experience may be tempted to roll our eyes when they talk about their challenges. But that's like rolling our eyes at a baby who's just learning to walk. It's a huge challenge for them. Where they are in life right now is where they are and over time they get they get stronger and better. And it's not because they're stupid. It's because they're inexperienced and that's where they are right now. 

19:45 

So someday, after tons of goaling, we will look back and we'll chuckle a bit at how overwhelmed we were by our current challenges and growth. And I am so excited for that day. I really am. But in the meantime, my unimaginable goals need to put me into a failing position. I have to become aware of my different strengths and weaknesses and I do this by reaching and failing and reaching and failing and reaching and succeeding and then reaching and failing. Right? I can't just go to the store and pick up some some big Tanya change. I have to create change in myself by going through the process of trying, failing, refiguring and trying again. So my goal should set up the urgency to move forward. The life of abundance that we all want in any form, whether it be financial or spiritual or emotional, it requires that I am uncomfortable. It requires that I am failing and stretching beyond what I thought was possible. The underlying message here of all these mistakes is I have permission to fail often and to fail big because this is where growth lies. So dream. Dream big. Do anything to get moving toward your dreams and to keep moving. Eventually the how will show itself. 

21:28 

So let's just review this really quick. Here's the five mistakes. First mistake, we set goals we know we can achieve. Second mistake, we set goals based on what we think we can do rather than on our dreams. Three, we require knowing exactly how it will play out before we set the goal. Four, we question our right to be, do, or have what we dream of. And five, we think the  purpose of the goal is to get the goal. 

21:56 

So let's reframe them instead of mistakes, but in things that we need to do. Number one, challenge your status quo. Just because this is the life you've always had doesn't mean it's the life you were meant to have. Two, dream bigger than you think possible. Three, be okay with not understanding the how. Four, decide you have a right to your dreams because you are worth it. And five, keep the focus on growing into your potential. Isn't this great stuff? Thank you to Paul Martinelli for the basic outline of the five mistakes. 

22:43 

I love growing up, don't you? It's so amazing to me to get to this place in my life where I feel like my feet are on a strong foundation. I feel like these are the best years of my life; all these pieces, all these things I've been learning my whole life are finally coming together to create this picture of my life, and to create an idea of what I'm going and what I'm supposed to be doing best time of life. So if you would love some personal help from me to learn how to tap into your potential or just navigate some tough situations with a little bit more clarity, contact me at tanyahale.com and book a free 20 minute coaching session to get you started. I would love to help you move into your dreams and as always if you love this podcast subscribe leave a review and share it with your friends that's the best way for me to grow my business and it's a great way for you to help other people do amazing things in their lives as well. Thank you so much for being with me today. I hope you have a really terrific day and that these thoughts of growth will help you to dream a little bit bigger. See you later. 

23:55 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.