Ignite Your Year: The Best Way To Hit Your Midlife Goals Easily And Consistently So You Can Enjoy The Process

Episode 13 | (0:00):

Hey there, friend. Today, I am talking about tweaking your perspective on goals. Now, by midlife and beyond, most of us have probably tried to set goals more than a couple of times and maybe we didn't hit them. Maybe we didn't understand why they were out of our grasp. But by midlife and any time after 40, we’re halfway through our lives here and maybe disappointment has grabbed on to us. Maybe we're thinking, “Oh, I'm just not destined to hit my goal. I'm just not one of those people.”

Let me tell you, you can hit your goals. And I'm going to give you a tip today that is deceptively simple yet so effective, because it sets you up for success. It's easy, it's encouraging, and it keeps your excitement and your momentum up when you're going after your goals. And that's exactly what you need. You ready? You ready to find out what this tip is? I know — I'm ready to tell you!

Hey there, Easy Ager, welcome back to the show. Before I get started, I wanted to let remind you to go pick up your free gift. It's a gift and it's free, so I guess I really don't know why I'm saying "free gift." Anyway, it's a freebie. It's called The 3 Steps To Rediscover Your Identity So You Can Thrive In Midlife & Beyond. Basically, it's an introduction to my three-step proprietary process, The ACE Approach, which stands for awareness, clarity and ease. So go pick up your gift at TheEasyAgingShow.com and check it out.

Okay, today is the third episode in the Ignite Your Year series. In the first episode, we talked about your one word, which is designed to help you get a little better grasp  — I guess is the right word I'm grasping for — help you get a little better idea of who you are at this point in your life, help you understand what midlife holds for you. There were fantastic questions in this book. It was a book titled Your One Word by Evan Carmichael, and he offered some fantastic questions to help you dig a little deeper to find out what your one word is.

The second episode was values-based goals. It is really important to align your goals with your values. Otherwise, you could still be going after things that just don't matter. And when you get to that finish line, you're like, "Yeah, I did it!" Then you say, "Oh, wait, I didn't even want this goal." We don't want you to do that.

So go check out episode 11 and episode 12 if you want to find out what came before this episode in the Ignite Your Year series, okay?

Okay, so I have to tell you, I absolutely love the tip that I'm going to be giving you for midlife goal setting today. Because as a former "beat- yourself-up-when-you-don't-achieve-your-goals" person, oh my goodness. I used to be so mean to myself. I bullied myself.

You know that whole thing where you hear that people talking about, don't bully yourself? Yep. That was me, guys. I used to do that. I used to beat myself up. I'd say "Oh, my gosh, I'm a failure. I've failed. Other people can get their goals, but I can't get mine. I guess I'm not really destined to do this, waaaaa!" It would just get worse and worse...

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and worse. I would get caught in this spiral of thought, and I would go just run it through my mind, "I failed, I failed, I failed" and it would go over and over again. I'd make this downward spiral and when I hit the bottom, it was just so hard to come out of that.

But I gotta tell you, I am a very determined person. I am a person who will persevere no matter what's going on. I will keep going with persistence, you know.

And I said, "You know what? I want to be a person who hits their goals." So I did a little research, I played with a few things, and I did this one little tweak to get some new perspective on goals. This tweak has helped me so dramatically.

Now before I get into the details, I wanted to tell you a couple of things.

Number one, you cannot be a failure. It just doesn't exist. That's because failure is an event. It's an event where you didn't achieve a goal or an expectation, and that's it. I mean, that's pretty much it. You get to put the meaning on it. I talked in episode eight about the meaning, how to choose the right meaning that was going to benefit you. So if you haven't heard that episode, go back and listen, please, and that'll clear a lot of this up for you.

So when you get to the point where things didn't go as planned, you get to make a choice. Now, you can make the choice like I used to make and beat myself up and call myself a failure and just dwell on this one thing that didn't work out.

Or you can choose a meaning that benefits you. You could just chalk it up to, "Hey, I learned something new today. I found out a way that doesn't work." You can do whatever you need to do to keep your spirits up.

Because beating yourself up has no value whatsoever. You've got to look at the reality of it: You tried. You gave it your best shot. Maybe you hit the goal, maybe you didn't.

But the reality is, you're out there and you're doing and you're taking action.

And I just want to say one more thing. I am confident that you do have the ability to achieve your goals. What you probably need is just a little tweak to your perspective on goals and the way that you set the goals. Sometimes that's the biggest issue for us in not hitting our goals.

If you're setting a goal, especially if it's a long-term, lifestyle goal like losing weight or creating a new habit, that type of stuff...

Cut the goal in half.

Now at this point, you may be rolling your eyes going "Oh really, Michelle? Seriously, that's just a mind trick!"

And I'm going to say "Yes, exactly. That's exactly what it is."

But you know, sometimes we have to trick our brains into playing the game with us instead of against us. Bullying yourself, going into that negative spiral of thought is playing the game against yourself.

So when you cut your goals in half, you're playing the game for yourself, you're doing something positive for yourself.

Let me give you an example. Let's say you have a goal to lose 50 pounds in six months, and at the end of that six months, you only lose 38 pounds.

At this point, you have a choice. You can either celebrate the 38 pounds that you lost, or you can beat yourself up about the 12 pounds that are still hanging onto your body. Cutting the goal in half absolutely changed my perspective on things.

So here's how it'll work:

Instead of 50 pounds, your goal is to lose 25 pounds in six months. But did you do that? No, instead of losing 25 pounds in six months, you lost 38 pounds. Hellooooo! How amazing does that feel? You didn't just achieve your goal, you blew it out of the water!

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I can guarantee you, if you got a goal like that, you would be all over social media. You'd be texting and calling your friends, you'd be telling everybody at your church or your synagogue. You would just be going on about how excited you are and how proud you are of yourself, wouldn't you?

And then you think about it again: You say, "I lost 38 pounds, blew my goal out of the water, and what do I have left? 12 pounds." Oh, please, that's easy after the 38. That's simple.

And you can even cut the 12 in half by saying, "In 30 days, I'm going to lose six pounds." And maybe in 30 days you lose eight or 10 pounds, too.

This is all about getting your brain in the right place to get excited and to get momentum. Your mindset when setting goals, or going after goals or dreams, or trying to create new lifestyle habits, when you're doing this type of stuff, you've got to keep yourself focused on the good. You find the good out there.

And if you're wondering if this actually works, I'm reading some information here from Finished by Jon Acuff. And he says,

"Those who cut their goal in half increased their performance from past similar goal-related challenges on average by over 63%.

Not only that, 90% of the people who cut their goal in half said they had an increased desire to work on their goal; it encouraged them to keep going, and it motivated them to work harder because the goal seemed attainable."

Isn't that crazy?! You cut your goal in half, you increase your performance by 63%. And then you could be one of the 90% who actually get excited about your goal because you're seeing some progress, you're seeing the momentum. So that's what this is all about.

You know me, I'm always about "fun-sized actions" (you know how I work.) And this is a great little fun-sized action for you to start thinking about as you're setting your goals for next year. I'm going to say, as you're setting your values-based goals for next year because I'm confident that you've already listened to Episode 12, right?

So I adore this. This has just been such a fantastic revelation just to get new perspectives on goals, to go with fun-sized actions by cutting things in half, and to not get into overwhelm or to get kind of depressed because I'm not seeing the momentum that I want.

And let me tell you, the celebration at the end of your six months or your three months or your two weeks or whatever you're doing, that celebration is going to feel so good that you're going to be ready to set that next goal, and that's the exciting part of all of this. :)

So that's it for today. Don't forget to pick up your free gift at TheEasyAgingShow.com and until next time, peace, love and blessings to you and yours. Take care. Bye-bye!