#038 Mindful Goals

Have you struggled with traditional goal setting in the past? Maybe you (like me) and tried SMART Goals and found them a bit dull and lackluster. 

In this episode I dive into how you can start to create more mindful goals that help you make meaningful progress.

I'll explore things like how your approach, self and circumstances can impact your goals, as well as sharing my alternative to SMART goals, iBecome Goals.

In this episode I also mention my Goal Exploration Canvas. This is a free tool you can download to dig deeper into what's important to you to set more intentionally aligned goals.

You can download the Canvas here: https://leadingbeings.ck.page/

Transcript

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Hey everybody. And welcome back to the re-ignited Leading Beings podcast. I am so excited to be back with you back in your AirPods or however you're listening to this. It's been over two years since I released an episode of the Leading Beings podcast. There are many reasons, some of them good, some of them not good, but the important thing is, is that I was inspired to start it up again.

It felt like time and I felt like there were things to explore and things I wanted to share. So here we are again. I am so glad to have you back. If you have been a listener in the past whether that was to the Good Work Revolution, which is what the podcast was called many moons ago, whether it was to the leading beings podcast or whether you are a new listener and this is the first time you are discovering the Leading Beings podcast. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. So happy to have you. I'm so grateful for you. And I'm excited. I am excited to get stuck in and sharing some great stuff with you on all things, awareness, potential, leadership, mindfulness, meditation, impact, meaning purpose.

All the good things all the things that I'm passionate about and excited about, and I'm excited about really helping you through this podcast really bring your meaningful impact to the world in your own unique and special way. Because I believe that that is one of the most important things we can do in life and in work, of course, and yeah, through the episodes, I'm going to be sharing with you.

How you can do that in a way that's aligned, that gives you a work-life in flow. So that it's not just about the work, but it's also also about you living really, really well and feeling fantastic in how you show up in the world. It's a very inside out approach. It's about who we're becoming and who we're being, not just what we're doing.

And I'm excited to share it all with you. So I'm not going to rabbit on for too long. Hopefully. Let's get into today's episode. And I wanted to chat today about an idea I've been doing a bit of work on and full disclosure. I am building also a course on, and that's this idea of mindful goals and really taking a different approach to our goal setting and the way that we work towards our goals.

Because if you're trying to make an impact in the world, goals are actually really important, right? The research shows us that we're far more likely to achieve the things that we seek out to achieve if we have goals and if we write them down and if we take intentional steps towards those goals, But something that I was really challenged by is that even as a coach, you think I'd be really into goal-setting.

But for me, the whole process never really stuck. I struggled with goal setting. If I wasn't being  held accountable, by my own coach or something like that. I was one of those people that would set all these massive new year's resolutions and find myself a couple of months down the track going, Oh my gosh, what did I do?

And  this is supposed to be my bread and butter, right? Coaches are supposed to be good with goals. So I felt like a real fraud and I was asking myself, why isn't this working? I had done a lot of goal-setting in my past. And some of the things that were the foundations of me learning about goal-setting were things like I read the book think and grow rich as part of my entrepreneurship degree.

And we actually had a whole subject, which was based around Think & Grow Rich and this whole idea of kind of writing your goals down and repeating themselves. Repeating them to yourself in the morning. And then another foray into goal setting for me was I worked for Lululemon back as one of my uni jobs and Lululemon had this really amazing goal setting culture.

And, you know, part of that was writing down our goals across  financial and personal. And I can't remember what the other categories were now, but we'd, we'd write those down and we'd stick them up on the walls and they'd be there to see, but for some reason, the whole way that a lot of goal-setting was done, just never really gelled for me.

And I think a big part of that is that SMART goals have really formed the basis for how so many of us look at goal setting and what we know of goal setting. I was even just chatting to a teacher the other day and they were saying, yeah, that's kind of what we teach kids about goal setting in schools that goals should be specific, measurable, achievable.

Relevant and timely and Smart Goals really have their place. But I think people don't know is that they were kind of designed back in the eighties really as a management tool. And they were designed for organizations and kind of helping organizations work towards really specific organizational goals.

And it was kind of the flow down into the individuals and what those individuals were doing towards those. So. They work really well when there's, you know, a bigger target and you're looking at well, what are the things that I'm doing specifically to work in line with that bigger target? And they're really great for managers too, because they are specific and they're measurable and they're time bound.

So a manager can look at a smart goal with an employee and go, great. So. What are your metrics? How are you doing against that goal based on the, the measurement that you've set and how are you going in terms of the timeframe that you have put in there and how relevant are these goals to what our company is trying to achieve as, as well as what you're trying to achieve in your career?

So there's absolutely a place for smart goals and they can be excellent in the right context. But goals setting research has actually come a long way since smart goals back in the eighties. There's been a lot more that's been done and Smart Goals aren't always the right option. They're not right in all scenarios.

But we're not taught other models generally. There's the GROW model, which is used quite often in coaching. But again, that's probably quite a high level process. And I suppose one of my beefs, shall I say with, with a lot of goal setting, is that it is all about the setting it's not often about, well, okay what do you actually do to work towards these goals? But we're not taught this stuff. We're not taught it in schools. We're not taught it in our work. There's not really a curriculum for goal setting and progress. Even as a coach, I had to really go hunting for theory, that is beyond the basics. And it's not even taught in a lot of coaching schools, to be honest. In, in a lot of detail, you know, a lot of coaching schools will teach goal setting at a very high level, but not go into the depth. And there is a bunch of great research out there on it. It's just often hidden behind academic walls where all those juicy journal articles sit or in textbooks that are worth a hundred dollars that no one's going to buy, which I went and bought. Anyway.

So, like I said, goals are about more than just setting them and smart goals puts a lot of attention on the setting. And I believe that we really need to go from goal setting to what I like to call a goal practice. And I'm going to talk more about that. But the idea of goal practice is , that it's not about the setting it's about slowly and intentionally practicing and evolving the different aspects, which contribute towards whether we're making meaningful progress towards our goals or not. Just like I'm a meditation teacher. I have a meditation practice. If I was just to meditate, I might sit down every once in a while and close my eyes and do a meditation, or I might listen to  a guided meditation or do something else. And I could say that, yeah, I meditate, but. My my meditation practice is a practice because I'm doing it continually. I do it every day. And I'm always looking at deepening my practice and working on that practice over time to help me evolve as a human. And that's what in my eyes I goal practice should really all be about as well.

So meaningful progress towards our goals. It's not just about the goals themselves. It could be about the goal. So I use setting the right goals is the way you're setting your goals, motivating and inspiring to you. It could be about the process that we take to move towards our goals or our approach.

Are you just about setting goals or do you have a process or a framework for moving towards your goals? It could also be about the circumstances that surround our goals. What is going on around you that might be contributing or detracting from you making progress for example, a global pandemic, it's a great example of something that, you know, your goals, might've been somewhat thwarted by COVID and by the pandemic. And it's actually nothing to do with you. It's no through no fault of your own. It's not because you haven't put in the work. It's not because you didn't have the right goals. The circumstances came in and put you on your ass basically, because there's nothing you can do about that situation.

Obviously, once you find yourself in that situation, there are things you can do to move yourself forward in the best possible way. But you know, the circumstances in this case have affected your progress. And then there's another really important one, which I think is maybe key to it all and often gets missed is the self.

So is there something going on inside of you that's impacting your, your momentum or is there something inside you that can support your momentum? So things that might be impacting in a negative way, it could be things like fear, lack of clarity, lack of confidence. Things that could support might be things like knowing your strengths being able to tap into your experience, whatever they might be.

So just to kind of go over those again, the things that help us make meaningful progress towards our goals, they're not just the goals, but the goal is one thing. Then there's the process or approach the circumstances you find yourself in and the self or, or who you are and how you're showing up. So all of these things are going to have an impact on whether you are making progress towards your goals or not making the progress you would like towards your goals? And I know for sure that when I'm not making progress towards my goals in the way that I would like that it can be a real knock to the confidence. So we can find ourselves in this spiral where we feel like we should be doing more.

We feel like we're not living up to our potential. We've got to do all the things. So we. Put more pressure on ourselves to, we might set bigger goals. We might try and go for more. We might put heaps and heaps on our plate, and then if we. Not improving in terms of the way that we're going about working towards those things.

We can find ourselves continually kind of not moving needle in the way that we'd like, which makes us feel even less confident about the way that we're  implementing our potential, implementing our potential. Let's just go with that for now. And you can kind of get sucked into this vicious cycle or this spiral of not feeling like you're moving the needle.

And so putting more on your plate and  not evolving and not getting better. So you still feel bad and you put more on your plate and round and round and round you go. So that's what I want to help people try and get out of with a more mindful goal setting, approach and practice. So what makes a goal mindful?

Well Goals that are mindful mindful in that they align with our values and our purpose. So they go beyond and stuff and beyond, I want to get that thing, or I want to get that promotion. It's less about the getting and more in terms of deeply aligning the action we're taking in our lives, towards the things that are most aligned with our values and our purpose and the who we're wanting to be in our lives, not just what the, what we're wanting to do. So my  mindful goals are also mindful of how the goal supports who and what is really important to us in life. And I emphasize the really cause it's really easy in life to get distracted by things that we think are important that aren't so important.

And when you get down to things at the end of the day if you really hone into what's important for people in life, they usually say things like their relationships and their family and learning and growth and all that kind of stuff. But yet we, we seem to mis prioritise in a sense often when we're sitting down to set our goals, it's very easy to fall into the trap of focusing on career and money.

And you know, that holiday, although I think holidays are important and I love a good holiday too. Not that we can go very far at the moment, but that's okay. But yeah are we focusing on things or are we focusing on the things that really do bring us fulfillment and happiness? And obviously that takes work that takes work to work out what those things really are.

So there kind of has to be a process. If we're, if our goals are going to be really mindful, there has to be a process that we go through in understanding what is more deeply meaningful to us and what does bring us happiness. 

So what else makes a goal mindful mindful for the deeper reasons why we have chosen the goals. So do we know why we've selected those particular goals over other goals? Mindful about how we go about achieving the goal and the impact on others and the world around us. So it's great to have goals that are focused on ourselves and taking us where we want to go. But how do those goals affect other people? How do they affect our family? If they're business goals, how do those business goals maybe affect the environment or affect the community which we find ourselves in or affect the people who are doing the work for us? 

Mindful of the time and energy that we're putting into our goals. So. Are we actually putting sufficient time and energy into the goals that we're trying to achieve? Are we giving them the space and the attention that they need in order for us to move them forward? This is something I've been guilty of in the past, and I'm not sure about you, but I know that I have set those goals and then life gets in the way. And I look back in a month's time and I go, Oh I didn't actually do anything towards that goal that I set. And you know, this is where priorities come into play, not just amongst our goals themselves, but, but priorities about life and how, how are our goals actually working with our other life priorities or against our other life priorities. And it can also go the opposite way that we can put too much time and too much energy into our goals and pursue them doggedly at the expense of other things in our lives. And this is where that idea of kind of aligning to what's really important comes into play because I certainly know I've seen scenarios where people have or organizations have pursued goals at at the expense of other things that should be more meaningful and important. 

So another thing that sits behind mindful goals is being mindful of how we are going about working towards the goals. You know, what are we actually doing? And this kind of aligns back to that kind of time and energy thing. But it's, it's more about the right action. Are we doing the right things to work us towards those goals and the strategy that sits behind moving us towards them? 

Then we've got being mindful of the ongoing relevance of the goal and shifting priorities. So I think a mistake that we can often make in life is that we set a goal and then we pursue it and we don't take time to go. Hmm. Is this goal still really working for me? Does this goal still feel aligned? Is it still relevant within the context of my life? Within the context of my work within the context of my business? A great example is what's happened with the global pandemic. If you had business goals or life goals that we, you were pursuing that are no longer relevant because you can't travel or no longer relevant because the global financial climate has changed. If you stick to those goals and keep trying to pursue them you can find yourself getting really frustrated because obviously you're, you're not going to have the same progress with those.

Sometimes we need to step back and go, okay, well, you know, if we take the pandemic as an example, now that we are living in a global pandemic, what in my goals needs to change? What is actually going to be more relevant and where are my priorities now? You know, if you're a parent, who's all of a sudden had to homeschool your kids. Your priority might now be in making sure that your kids get a really amazing lockdown education, if you're still in lockdown. Your goals might be to support the mental health of your family and friends, and that might be so much more important than that goal you had of saving for a new house or  getting that promotion at work or doing that thing in your business, because you are tuned into the things that are most important and you know, when to shift because the, the relevance of your goals has changed.

So we can also be mindful of being flexible and adaptable with our goals. And this really links into the last point I made too, in that the way that we might go about pursuing our goals. We might have an idea about what that should look like and how that should be, but things are going to change. There are going to be things that mean that we have to Adapt the direction or the way that we're going about something. And the more flexible and adaptable we can be and know when we need to be flexible and adaptable with our goals. I think the more likely we are of making meaningful progress towards them.

Now, I just want to hop and say meaningful progress. I talk about this a lot because I think we, we kind of need to reframe this idea of achievement of goals. It's just a personal opinion I have, but I think meaningful progress is, well, it's more meaningful because as humans, we need that sense of meaningful progress.

But often we find that achievement, we can achieve something that we set out to achieve and find that we're already onto the next thing. So I just like that as a reframe, to think about things as, as meaningful progress rather than achievement. 

So next we have being mindful of how reaching the goal makes us feel. So, why is this important? Because if we're not mindful about how we feel when we reach our goal, a) we can just very quickly move on and not really take the time to savor the goal when we do make that progress towards it. And maybe in some case get to a final end point with it. We, it's also important to be mindful of how we feel because we can. Get there with whatever we're trying to do and realize that we don't get the feeling that we were hoping for. So, you know, the classic example might be someone wanting the promotion or to buy the new car, a lot of those kind of more material or power focused goals. And you get there and you get the new car and a week later, You don't feel anything anymore because it was something that might've been surface level or, I mean, it, it might not even be that you might work towards a goal that feels really, really meaningful and then you, you get to a point where you've made the progress you're looking to make, and it doesn't quite feel right. That's maybe a sign that something wasn't quite right with the goal. And so maybe you need to go back to those values and that purpose and what is really, really important in life. Because my experience has been that when we do follow the things that are most important to us in life, and we are really tapped into that, that the goals do give us a greater feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment when we make progress towards them. And also that satisfaction and fulfillment is. Far more long lasting and it almost worms its way into our, our core and our soul and it sticks and it builds to that sense of greater fulfillment in life over time.

So as I mentioned I'm not a huge fan of the smart model. And so I've actually come up with an alternative model for goal setting, which I like to call. iBecome goals. So iBecome goals, shift the focus from what we're trying to get or achieve to who we are seeking to become. And a lot of this is actually based in a lot of goal-setting research as well.

So iBecome stands for goals that are intrinsic, boundless, energizing conscious, optimistic, mapped and managed and evolutionary. So I'll just give you a really quick overview of what each of those things mean. 

So intrinsic comes from within not about kind of external rewards or validation. 

Boundless, almost the opposite to specific. They're big, they're lofty. They're almost something that doesn't have an endpoint to it. 

They're energizing. So they really make us feel like, Oh yeah, I want to do this. 

They're conscious. They ask us to reflect on ourselves and what's important to us and also conscious about others and how our goals are impacting others.

They're optimistic. So they're positive. They have this idea, behind them not moving away from something, but moving towards something. So for example, I'm going to be really healthy rather than I'm going to quit smoking. 

They are mapped and managed. So because they are boundless because we're going for a more lofty type goal and something that's more about kind of a deeper being of who we are. We then need to map those goals out and look at the levels that sit underneath those goals. And then we need to kind of manage the process around how we're working towards those goals. 

And then finally they're evolutionary. They're actually about growing and evolving and being, and becoming more of who we want to be in the world rather than doing and achieving and getting.

So this is the actual framework that I use for my own goals. Along with something I call the Goals Practice Cycle, which is my eight step approach to mindful and meaningful goal progress. And I am going to be launching a course this year that goes into this approach in much more detail. 

But I'll give you a little hint. The first step is explore. So in that, that goal practice cycle exploring our goals is where it can really all begin. And often we when we sit down to set our goals, we just launch in we're like, Oh, I'm just going to, yeah, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this.

And often it's based on kind of what's most top of mind at the moment or whatever it might be, but I highly recommend an exploration process before you do your goal setting, as it really helps make sure that your goals are aligned to your deeper values and purpose. Like I mentioned before. So it's really about digging in before, you kind of open out and I used to be a human centered designer. I worked in design thinking and experience design. And one of the parts of that process before you kind of go into defining a problem or defining what you're trying to achieve is that you really kind of do an exploration and you do research into what is  the current state or what's going on? It's this kind of idea of divergent thinking where you open your mind up before you narrow in, and this is exactly what exploring your goals is all about setting a goal, narrows you in and it focuses you in on something. But before you do that, I believe it's really great to open up first and really be divergent in your thinking about what's possible and why you wanting to do things and how all of that works. 

So, if you would love to get some help with this with your goal exploration, I do actually have a tool available. It's called the Goal Exploration Canvas. You can hop onto my website LeadingBeings.com and download that.

It's totally free and there's a guide that goes along with it to help you really dive into that. And like I said, this came from my own process when smart goals weren't working for me, when I was struggling with my own goal setting, I sat down and I went, how do I make this work for me? What do I need to do differently to do goals in the Kate McCready way that suits me? And Goal exploration was one of the first things that I did. And that was kind of the Yeah, it was the, the spark that seeded a whole process that I now use pretty much every day, really. I mean I'm checking in every day, but  I have activities that I do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis and annually as well, but Yeah, it's, it's really helped transformed the way that I feel about my goals and working towards them and the progress that I'm making. And it's also really improved. I suppose my own productivity I feel like I'm far more in flow with, with the activity that  helps me move the needle on the things that are most important. 

So what do you think. How mindful your goals and the process that you take to work towards them has smart goals worked for you in the past, or have you like me been looking for something more deep and meaningful?

I'd really love to hear from you. So come and say hi, Instagram or LinkedIn or if you'd like to be part of a deeper discussion on goals and have some Q and A with me come and follow me on clubhouse as well. I'm going to be hosting a discussion and a Q and A on mindful goals probably about a week after this podcast is launched.

But come and follow me on Instagram and come along and follow me on, on clubhouse as well. And you'll get notification of when that mindful goals chat is coming up. I'd really love to see you there. I'd love to meet you. I'd love to hear how you're going with your goals and the challenges that you have, because this is a work in progress.

My way is not the only way I'm always looking to add in new inspiration, new ways of doing things, you might have some great thing that you do that, that would help me make this even better. So love to hear from you and yeah. And let me know how this has made you think differently about your goals and your goal setting.

If it has at all. Thank you so much. And I'm so grateful that you have taken the time to have a listen to the Leading Beings podcast. I'm Kate McCready, and I look forward to gracing your presence in the next episode. See you later.