It Starts With Attraction
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It Starts With Attraction
The Truth Behind Why You’re Not Reaching Your Goals
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Understanding how to set meaningful goals can transform your self-esteem and overall happiness. This episode emphasizes the importance of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, exploring self-concordant goals that resonate with individual desires over societal expectations.
• Discussing personal motivations behind goals
• Highlighting the concept of self-concordance
• Distinguishing between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations
• Introducing the PIES framework for holistic goal-setting
• Importance of setting achievable and stretch goals
• Exploring the need for self-compassion in goal pursuit
• Opening the door for future personal growth and achievement
Let’s dive in!
Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships
Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 500,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.
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So, on today's episode, we're going to talk about how to set goals. Yes, one of my favorite topics.
Speaker 2:Not mine.
Speaker 1:Why not?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I like setting them, I like accomplishing goals.
Speaker 1:You are definitely more picky in the goals that you set and work towards than I am.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I don't do New Year's resolutions, I just if it's a resolution, it's a resolution If it's something that I strive for. It could it could be the 14th of July, I don't, I don't care, but it will be time bound and we're going to talk about that. Did you write down smart on your little?
Speaker 1:piece of paper. I didn't, because smart goals actually aren't the best way to set goals.
Speaker 2:Okay, Well, I'm going to talk about smart goals but we will talk about it as a method, but I'll let you present your flawed method before I've present the correct method.
Speaker 1:Let's do that so one of the reasons that I love talking about goals well, first of all, I'm a pretty ambitious person, so I love to have something to achieve and feel good about myself based on achieving it. That's probably one of it. But goal setting in general in the work that I've been doing for my PhD, as you know, because I divulge all of my learnings to you throughout the process is that goal setting is important for people. It's important for self-esteem, it's important for the way that we view ourselves a lot of things but the problem is in setting goals, most people actually don't even know how to set a good goal, and not just in the sense of like being specific and making smart goals and things like that. Most people have difficulty identifying what it is that they truly want to do for themselves, and that is the first thing that we need to cover as we're talking today about how to set good goals, how to achieve these goals, because the other part of it is in the research that I've been doing for my dissertation for my PhD. There is research and a decent amount of it out there, that when you work towards goals like you say okay, this is the goal I have for myself, I'm going to lose 20 pounds, as an example. If you don't hit that goal, you actually begin to experience a decrease to your self esteem. Another interesting thing can happen to that if people continue to not hit their goals, and because it's affecting their self esteem, it can actually lead people to begin lying and like, lie, cheat and steal, so to say, even just to themselves to make themselves feel good.
Speaker 1:Because goal setting and self esteem are so closely intertwined that it's a way to like preserve the way we feel about ourselves. So goal setting is important because it actually has a direct effect on how we think and feel about ourselves, and so with that, we need to be like serious about the goals that we set. We shouldn't just throw it around willy nilly. When you set a goal, you're making a commitment to you. That's first and foremost, and we need to take that seriously and follow through with that commitment. So we'll, now that that's set, we're going to talk about how to set good goals, what that means and how to move forward.
Speaker 1:So there are some indications from some recent research that I've done in different areas that have led, that have given me, that have shown me that it's very difficult for people to actually choose a goal? Because in this research, people were asked to set a goal, like set a goal for the next period of time and write it here and those goals, and they were instructed to set a certain type of goal called self-concordant, which we'll talk about in just a minute. Ok, but people would say things like I want to run a half marathon over the next two weeks and it's like you're, you're not.
Speaker 1:Unless you have one booked and you've been training for it for three months, you're not running a half marathon in the next two weeks I mean, I've done that without training okay, that's true actually you did, but you had been running in the army, it wasn't like you went from a couch potato, so I I mean we y'all run like five miles on a PT one morning Very rare so you had been in the shape of running. Anyway, yeah.
Speaker 1:One person said get married, and it's like, okay, if you have. If the wedding's already scheduled, I guess If you're engaged and ready to get married, great. But if you are single and looking on Bumble for your next person, you're not getting married in the next two weeks.
Speaker 2:I mean you can, it's just probably a huge mistake Again sure you can, but let's.
Speaker 1:So that was the first indication of like. The first problem is people don't even know how to set goals. Yeah, over the next like over a two week time frame, four week time frame, a year timeframe, and especially self-concordant goals. So, according to the research, self-concordant goals are the ones that, when people set this specific type of goal and achieve it, leads to the highest increase in self-esteem, because a self-concordant goal is a goal that you actually want to do, because you want to do it. Yes.
Speaker 1:Another way that people talk about this is intrinsic motivation. So this is something where the motivation to do this is coming from entirely within myself. I have, like, this burning desire within me to make this happen, for whatever reason. So if we think of it like as a spectrum, intrinsic motivation would be all the way to the right and extrinsic motivation is all the way to the left, and then you have a motivation which is just the lack of any motivation. But extrinsic motivation is I'm doing this because I feel like I have to. It's an external. So that might be like your whole office is competing in some kind of challenge to do a whole 30 or something like that and you don't really want to do it, but you feel like you have to because everyone else is doing it and maybe there's a reward of a hundred dollars to the person, to people who do it. So it's like, okay, I'll do it for those reasons, but it's not because it's something I truly want to do. That's extrinsic motivation and not the kind of goals we're focused on.
Speaker 1:Self-concordant goals are the ones where you're saying, like I genuinely have a desire to do this. I genuinely have a desire to travel to three different countries this year. I genuinely have a desire to get my VO2 max to over 50. I genuinely so. For me, like it's being able for each person to take time and genuinely think about what are the things I want. If I take away other people's expectations of me, what do I want to do? Because I want to do it?
Speaker 2:I think the emphasis on taking away other people's expectations for you cannot be understated enough or overstated enough, I'm sorry. Mm-hmm. I feel like it's understated. We cannot overstate it. Right. When I was in the military and I was overweight, heavier than I am now, and I was overweight, heavier than I am now. They're not wrong to hold physical fitness standards and body weight standards and body fat percentage standards and I made those standards even though I was on the higher end of what was acceptable. But it was other people setting those goals for me.
Speaker 2:And I never really aspired to do more than just meet the standard, and I so. I was one of those people who met the standard, but I wasn't like blowing it. Now I am like no, I want to get to a BMI of 24.1 specifically. That'll give me some wiggle room to go up a little bit and then down and oscillate between the two during bolts and cuts. So I have a specific number. I have not just a specific number of a BMI, a specific number of what I would weigh and all those other things, and I have a certain amount of calories per day. I'll have to stop my diet on this day to go into maintenance phase that I can regen, and then I'll have to pick it back up, and so I have all that kind of planned out over the next year. Whether or not I stick with it is you know, stay tuned, we'll see. But I am now like no, this is for me.
Speaker 2:I decided that if I love me and if you love yourself, then when we we see something that's unhealthy within us, we want to change it because we love ourselves so much. So I think that stripping away other people's expectations if your spouse is pressuring you to lose weight because you know they're hinting, that they're losing attraction. You know that that stinks. I still think that that you should strive to to do that, but not because of them. If they left tomorrow, hopefully they don't, but if they left tomorrow, walked out the door and never came back, finding the motivation and the reason and the why within you to do it anyway, and it's not for them it's for you because you love yourself, and that's that's.
Speaker 2:That applies to just any goal. Not, we use weight so often because it's probably the most common one for americans to to want to do. But there are so many other worthwhile goals. You mentioned traveling and all those things, so Well, you can use the pies too.
Speaker 1:So using physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual as a framework of how to set goals is helpful too. So, physically, what do I truly want for my physical self? How do I want to look and feel better? Want for my physical self, how do I want to look and feel better? Intellectually, what are my goals? I truly want to finish my PhD this year. That is my number one. For you, my number one intellectual goal. Emotionally, what does that look like? And a lot of these are going to be relational.
Speaker 1:So for me, a goal that I set is that every date that is my child's birthday. So, like our daughter was born on the 9th, our son was born on the 29th. Is that right? Yes, that's right, that is correct. So, like that day each month, I want to be intentional about doing something special with them. So having it be like a date day and then you and I having that, whether that be like around the day of our anniversary each month or around your birthday, which could, like is probably gonna be the same week most months, so you know we can be flexible about that. But, like that's my way of saying, I want to be intentional about quality time. That's the goal I want to do. And then spiritually, like, what are the goals? So for me, I want to do more with missions, and there's several ways that you know of that that's playing out in my life and that I'm pursuing it Like I wanted to volunteer more. But as I sat down and thought, well, how do I want to do that, what do I, what do I truly want to do? And I just know that that's the way that God is calling me. So that's a goal. And now that, like that's an example of a goal that doesn't have a specificity to it, like I don't have a time with it. I don't I'm. It's kind of just like generally I'm moving in this direction for this goal because I don't have enough information yet. But with some of my physical goals I'm like I'm on a pretty stringent training plan because I know specifically what I want to happen and that's OK. You can have the smart goals that are super specific and time bound and eventually goals should end up getting there. But there's so many different types of goals that a person could have a learning goal, a habit goal, a self-change goal, that they're all going to look different in how you measure them and how you track them.
Speaker 1:Yes, and also a good, I think, a caveat to say here is there's always going to be times in life that we do have to do things that aren't our goals. Maybe at work, you're given a quota you have to meet. It wasn't the one you generated, but you have to do it. You still get a boost in self-esteem by hitting that goal. It's just not the same as if you were to set that goal yourself.
Speaker 1:But the real gold ticket here is a self-concordant goal, something you truly want to do. And another key for self-concordancy is having being able to have autonomy of that goal and not feeling like you are controlled into making it. So autonomy is I have the freedom to choose the goal and to go about doing it and achieving it the way I want to. Yes, as opposed to controlled is here's your goal and here's exactly how you're going to do it. Both of them have a place, but having autonomy in your goal leads to higher self-concordance, which leads to higher overall well-being. So that's the key here, yeah, so then, what are some self-concordant goals you're working on? What are some things that you're doing because you genuinely want to, other than weight loss? You've already talked about that A BMI of like 24.1. Is that what you said?
Speaker 2:An O-8 of 178.
Speaker 1:An O-8 of 178. But what happens if you don't? Okay, this is going to go into my next point. So you want to make a goal that's achievable, but also a stretch is more than a stretch it is, I don't know that it's doable.
Speaker 2:Not.
Speaker 2:So the end of my six month diet phase will be the end of April Highly unlikely, unless I were to work out really hard between now and then or drop calories further.
Speaker 2:I always reserve the right to drop calories a bit further, but I want to do it in very tiny increments and then wait, like two to four weeks, to see what a difference is being made. So not at the rate that I would drop calories. It's highly unlikely to occur by the end of April, which is when I will stop doing a diet and then I will go into, at a minimum, a maintenance phase. Um, for a period of time, probably about four months, which is two thirds. The length of the diet should probably go the same length of the diet. I'm going to try and cheat and do two thirds and then, around the time of the holidays, getting ready to start pick back up, because I like losing weight through the holidays. It's actually kind of nice in the wintertime when I and that's kind of personal to me in the past I put on the most weight during the holidays in the winter and I never shed it off.
Speaker 1:So actually losing weight over the?
Speaker 2:holidays feels really good. So at the current rate, you know, last week I think I talked and I said I was like 202, now I'm 201, so a pound a week, right. So I'm on track for about a pound a week and, yeah, I won't hit that goal. I'll hit around half that goal-ish that goal. I'll hit around half that goal ish, uh, 12 and a half ish pounds of fat loss by the time I'm going to stop. So, yeah, I'm going to have to pick it back up.
Speaker 2:I'm going to have to take a break, just so my body can just readjust hormones and things. You don't want to tank your hormones to testosterone and things like that for men and estrogen and other things for women. So you don't really want to tank your hormones and all that. So you do need to take a break. And that's part of the specific and measurable, achievable, realistic part of everything. But a lot goes into building up to the point where I even get to a point where I'm comfortable setting these specific goals, charting out the time, all that.
Speaker 2:If somebody's never even thought about their macros or their or even calorie tracking, or they've never opened MyFitnessPal or any other tracking, I don't use that one, I use a different one, but that's the most common one. If they've never even thought about that, then doing all these things whether it's a self-concordant or a smart goal is just out of reach. It's just it's so far outside the comfort zone. It's not that they're not intelligent enough to do it, it's just that it's so far outside the comfort zone that it's so highly unlikely to happen.
Speaker 1:Well, I think there's aspects to it. So, first of all, you set the goal of losing weight because it was something you truly wanted to do. You don't feel like there's an outside force or anything like that. Okay, so you said I want to lose weight. So this is how it goes in phases. I truly want to lose weight. So this is how it goes in phases. I truly want to lose weight.
Speaker 1:Well then, if we're going to follow, like, the stretch goal method, so you want to, ideally, when setting goals, you want to do something that is attainable but a bit challenging. Who initially wants to lose weight? It should probably be something like 10 pounds. That is a stretch, but it's not 50. It's not 80. Because another part of this is the harder you set it on the front end, the more likely you are to actually not even start because it feels too overwhelming. So you start with 10 pounds. Well, then you get into, like, the planning process. Well, what is it going to take for me to lose 10 pounds? It means I'm going to have to start getting like eating less. It means I'm going to have to decrease my calories, because that's a key part of it, and it means I'm going to have to exercise more. Those are the two key things that have to happen. So that's when you start kind of creating the plan that's going to support the goal, and I think a smart goal is fine.
Speaker 1:You want to be specific. I want to lose 10 pounds by when? Well, let's make that realistic to a half a pound, to a pound a week. Two pounds a week is pretty aggressive. Anything more than that is stupid. So make it something again that is achievable. Yet a stretch. So let's say it's a pound a week, so we're talking about a 10 week timeframe if you're going to set this method. So now, specific. And it's a pound a week, so we're talking about a 10-week time frame if you're going to set this method. So now, it's specific and it's measurable. How are you going to measure it? By the scale? Is it achievable? Well, we've broken it down to where it is. Is it realistic? We've broken it down to where it is. Does it have a time bound? Yes, we've broken it down.
Speaker 2:So you saying you want to be 178?
Speaker 1:pounds, I would like to reach the weight of 178 pounds, which was a total of 22 plus 40-ish pounds, 42 pounds you're losing.
Speaker 2:So from where I started, that would be 44 total 44 total pounds.
Speaker 1:But the thing is that I want people to hear and maybe even you you're not doing this all at once, you've broken it into steps, and I think that it's appropriate to say, because someone may say, like me, for example, I may say I'd love to weigh 130 pounds. I weigh 143. And the truth of the matter is that's an ideal like truly in my head. I really just want to be like, have less fat and more muscle, which we talked about in the episode that we covered that, so that I think it's like a good general thing. But I might first say, well, I'm just going to first lose five pounds, because for me that's realistic but still a stretch. So I want to get down to 137, 138, 137, 138. I may get there and say it's not worth it. I don't want to continue to do the work to be 130 pounds, and that's okay for people.
Speaker 1:I think people set goals I want to run a marathon and then they run a 5k and they're like you know what? I'm actually good here and that's another reason it's important to stair step goals. Yes, instead of setting out and saying I'm going to run a marathon and then you hit the have the hit to your self-esteem when you don't do it. You start with I'm going to run a 5k, and then you reevaluate and you can have this ideal in mind of you know, maybe one day I want to run a marathon and I'll put that on my like to evaluate goal list, but first I'm just going to run this 5K and that's what you commit to and that's a better way to do it. Another thing that we see is people say well, I want to be a better mom, dad, wife, husband. That's too vague. It is too vague.
Speaker 1:How can you make it specific?
Speaker 2:That one, I don't know Go to more baseball games or something. So when, when we do talk about setting goals in order to, on some level, increase our self-confidence? Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:One of the ways that I like to picture doing that and I scribbled some circles here on a piece of paper is imagine, if you will, a large circle with three different kind of colors of lines. Here in this illustration I have the red line on the outside. That represents areas where you are incredibly, incredibly uncomfortable and generally incapable. So if someone were to say, hey, rob, you need to go run a six minute mile, I'd be like, nope, that's in the red, that's just something I'm not physically capable of doing at this age. Even my fastest was, I think, a 645. So that's out here in the red. I would be uncomfortable and incapable. I just can't do that.
Speaker 2:The yellow represents an area that is very challenging but very achievable, something that you can push yourself towards and actually achieve. It's not comfortable but you can do it. And then the black represents all the areas and the things that you are very comfortable with. You know things you've done for a long time.
Speaker 2:So as we set goals and as we accomplish things and as we achieve things, it's kind of like this like you're, you're, you're saying, well, I want to get better at running, so you kind of do this thing here, you go run, you go run a 5k and it's, you know you're sucking air into your lungs and you feel like you're going to die, but at the end of it you feel great.
Speaker 2:So then you start running a little bit more and you do these things, and so you start to grow this black area, this, this circle that represents where you're comfortable, you expand it and in that expansion you are generally now more comfortable, more capable of more things in life in general. And this yellow circle that represents that which is challenging, achievable but challenging, that will also grow. And then this red circle, which represents that which you're incredibly uncomfortable with or incapable of, that will grow too, you know, and not in a bad way, but in a good way. It'll get further out and the, you know, maybe at some point if I ran enough six minute- miles could be now in the yellow like within striking distance.
Speaker 2:maybe I can't do it today, but if I set a very specific plan in place, I could actually accomplish that. Well then, the red would no longer be a six minute mile, It'd be a five minute mile. Yep. And the next thing, you know, we have human beings running four minute miles Right. So it's rare, but it's been done.
Speaker 1:I really like that, because the thing about goal setting and goal achievement is goal achievement begets more goal achievement. So it's like this snowball effect in the positive, where you, you achieve more, so you achieve more, so you achieve more, so you achieve more and you begin to break the glass ceiling of what you thought was possible for you. But it all and that leads to just so much, so much change in our lives and so many good things. But it all starts with being able to identify well, what is it that I want to do, having the why that's strong enough to do it and the competency. So someone who you know, someone, might say I want to run a six minute mile, but they are, they can't like, for some reason, maybe they're wheelchair bound, like that's may not be the goal for them because they don't have the competency to do it. So make sure that you are also picking just the capability.
Speaker 2:If you're wheelchair bound, it's not that you're incompetent, you just physically you can.
Speaker 1:Well, the word yeah, that's right, the word in the the research is competency. So, when we look at self-determination, it's autonomy, competency, autonomy, competence and relatedness, and I'm not going to talk about talk about all three of those. But, um, it's exactly what you said, like why do you want to do it? Is your why strong enough? Because it's truly coming from within you, and a lot of people do struggle making goals. I want to go back to the relational part. Like, I want to be a better blank person, friend.
Speaker 1:Well then, take time to identify what is the area in which you feel like you're not. Is it because you get angry all the time? Is it because you aren't there as much as you wish you were? Is it because you really suck at responding to people when they reach out to you to hang out? Like, what is the area that you feel that you want to grow in and get specific about that? I want to be better at, uh, texting people back when they text me, or I want to be better at dealing with my anger and not taking it out on my spouse. And then, from there, you make a plan. So you try and make it again like we're making it as specific as we can, and then you're making the plan of what that's going to look like, and so that is how to set, and hopefully achieve, better goals.
Speaker 2:Yes, um, to echo what you just said, that you know that when we're looking at things iny goals being a better parent, spouse, running better, lifting more, looking thinner there are a lot of things that are just kind of these lofty ideas, and I think you should ask yourself what do I want the most? Where do my thoughts keep coming back to day after day when I, you know, lay down to get ready to go to sleep at night? What kind of hits my mind besides worry or anxiety or anything like that, or work related stuff? Is there something you want? A bigger house? Oh, that might take 30 years to get to that point, depending on what it is right, and a lot goes into that. Whatever, that is that you want the most, and I would say, with the caveat of something that could be realistically achieved within the next 12 to 18 months a lot of times, um, maybe bigger houses in there, but if you know, if you're in a situation where that's just not in the cards financially, that that may be a loftier goal, that you keep and you don't give up on that dream, but that you set smaller goals that could actually stair step up into that so you can have your big, lofty goal and without setting, you know, having a big giant mansion as the goal, set stair step goals.
Speaker 2:Well, if I started my own business, I could make more money and scale that business to a point where I may be able to eventually sell it and either afford a home or make enough cashflow in that side business, that business to a point where I may be able to eventually sell it and either afford a home or make enough cashflow in that side business or that business to do that. Well then you say, okay, well, I should start it as a side hustle, shouldn't quit the job just to go do that and then maybe go broke and thinking about ways to just kind of stair-step and over the course of 30 years, maybe sooner, you may accomplish that. So I think, kind of stair-stepping it. But you you have to think what do you really want you? Not what your spouse wants for you or your parent you're talking about external or what maybe a boss at work wants for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, depending, depending on how personal your boss at work.
Speaker 1:But if it's something that affects your family, then you and your spouse should set those goals together, and it should be a compromise of what do we want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you shouldn't just go design the house on your own.
Speaker 1:Right Contact a builder.
Speaker 1:Have it built and then tell your spouse yeah exactly this is what we're doing, because I want to do it. Yes, right, yes, yeah, but no, I totally hear you. The other thing I was thinking of when, when I listened to Matthew Perry's autobiography rest in peace Uh, he talked about how I mean he talks about in there his journey to becoming famous and his drug addictions and all of the things, and there was a line in there that just hit me so hard and he said I got everything I ever wished for. The problem was I wished for all the wrong things because the money and the fame destroyed him, and so I would encourage people, kind of as a side note, as they're thinking of their goals.
Speaker 1:And you were talking about the mansion and things like count the cost for you to live in the big house. What is that going to do to your relationships? What is that going to do to time with your spouse? What is that going to do to you? Because you're going to become a greedier person, maybe along the way, and so maybe that's not it, like, maybe it is what you truly want, but maybe it's what you truly want because you want to prove something to someone else. Yeah, and that's not self-concordant, like you're still doing it for an extrinsic motivation, because you're wanting other people's approval.
Speaker 2:So then, what is a way a person can vet their own motivation? Because, you know, self-reflection can be the hardest kind of reflection. What if there was, like a childhood hang-up that I didn't think mattered, but it's at the very back of my mind? Let's say, and this didn't happen, thankfully, my parents were very nice to me. I was actually a very skinny kid, but let's just say, let's pretend I struggled with weight as a kid. I was skinny as a rail. My sister called me string bean, but let's just pretend I was a little bit chubby. Yeah, let's pretend I was a little bit chubby and my parents were constantly kind of like nagging me about it.
Speaker 2:Well, let's say my in adulthood. My parents have passed away and gone and you know, then I set these weight loss goals here in adulthood, which is still something worthy. It's still a worthwhile and I will be healthier if I accomplish it. But am I doing it because of a hangup of a deceased parent or something, or am I doing it because this is? I'm finally starting to look inward and be like, okay, I look in the mirror and I see that this person I love, which is me, isn't living their healthiest best life, and I want them to live their healthiest best life because it's me and I love me.
Speaker 2:You know, or is it you know? I hear mom's voice in my head when I look in the mirror. So I think you know. How do we self-reflect? I mean, I think, In a healthy way, or should we go to a therapist and vet things through a therapist or something?
Speaker 1:Maybe. I mean, I think that's probably something, for that could probably take its own whole episode to unpack and we could probably look at some research and come back with some things.
Speaker 2:Let the voices inside your head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's very complex in nature, right? Because right now we're talking about setting goals. I don't know that anyone's ever going to have a 100% pure intrinsic goal ever in their life. Like, even the things I want to do may be impacted of a of something else that's happened and I may not be aware of, of a of a childhood circumstance that led to that. Yeah, it takes some awareness, it takes reflection, like you're saying. It takes that Um, and maybe it's just asking, like one, like a very quick thing that we could talk about is just continuing to ask why. So you ask why, like four or five times, I want to lose weight, why?
Speaker 2:Cause I want to lose weight. Why? Because I want to be healthier.
Speaker 1:Why, why. And then you just do that several times to really try and get to the core reason why. And we talk a lot about weight loss, we talk a lot about exercise, because that's typically what people choose as goals when they first go about it. But it could be I want to minimize my stuff, I want to have my stuff, I want to, I want to. I want to have inner peace, I want to. You know, there's no end to the goals that people could set for themselves, but I think a good overview as we wrap up the episode is the first. The first thing you do is you ask yourself what do I want the most and why? So that's number one, number two. Then you take that and you sell. You set a self-concordant goal. So it truly is like I want to declutter my house, and that's what they want to do. So I want to declutter my house. Why do I want that? Because I'm going to feel, I'm going to feel clearer in my head and I want to give my stuff to people who need it. And you know all of this stuff. Okay, so then how do you make that self concordant? Well, I'm setting this goal because I want to. It's not because anyone else is making me. I feel like I have the autonomy and the confidence to. So it's kind of like a checkmark. And then you make it specific I'm going to do one room a weekend for the next three months and work through it that way, and that makes it specific and time bound. And then if people are still struggling and they're like, well, I really am struggling, like I've never set goals before or I've consistently and historically always failed and I don't even trust myself, use the pies as a framework and remember, make it achievable and a stretch.
Speaker 1:Think of the 4% rule. This is in performance psychology. Is the 4% rule? You just want to do a goal that is 4% harder than what you know you can do. So 4% is not a lot and for high achievers that sounds stupid. It's like it's not even worth doing if it's only 4%. I want it to be 20. I want it to be 40. I want it to be 50. But in reality you set a goal that's just 4% harder, whatever that looks like. So it's just like mentally you may be like how does cleaning out a house lead to 4%? Well, you just do something that's like a little bit hard. That's why it's like one room a weekend. Maybe it's one room a month, something you know you can do, but it's going to be a little bit of a stretch and that becomes the way that you set and achieve goals.
Speaker 2:One thing we have not talked about yet, but I do want to mention at the very end of the episode, but I think it's very important Is the space wherein we leave for failure.
Speaker 2:You know you. You said to me well, well, what if you don't get to your goal? I've already decided I'm still going to love myself and I. There are days where you know, like on the tracking app and stuff, I might hit a bit over that. It's actually been a while and it was the beginning of the diet that I decided if there's a day where I just blow through my calorie limit, I'm not going to beat myself up. I decide on the front end. I'm not going to beat myself up. If there's that failure.
Speaker 2:I'm going to allow it. And the next day when I wake up, it's a new day and it and I'm not going to punish myself by lowering calories even more that day. I'm just going to keep going.
Speaker 2:And so not practicing self-punishment by if you fail to meet the incremental goal on Tuesday, you like do more on Wednesday. No, just pick up where you left off and just try again. Dust yourself off and don't beat yourself up. And that can be the hardest thing in the world for so many people, especially if they. I feel like if you have parental hangups, perhaps from childhood or teenage years, that could make things harder. And it was when I decided that if I do blow through my calorie limit, I'm not going to punish myself for any of that.
Speaker 2:I think I missed one day at the very beginning, like in the first week, where I kind of did that and the next day picked back up, dusted myself off, didn't punish myself and just kept going. And I don't think I've missed a day since. So and and and. That makes all this measurable, achievable, time-bound stuff a lot more accurate. And if it happens tomorrow, if it happens today, maybe I just get too hungry and just eat a bunch of food. Um, that's fine, I'm just tomorrow morning I'll pick back up and start over. Yeah, that's a really good point.
Speaker 2:And there is going to come a point where, if you do that over and over and over, let's say you keep failing the incremental daily goal that will get you to the higher goal. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Stepping back, taking a step back from that higher goal, not abandoning it entirely, but saying you know what? I'm going to put this on the shelf. This just isn't the cards right now. I thought it was in this yellow zone here for me, but it turns out it's in the red. Yeah, so what I'm going to do is I? I I'm going to lower it to the something that's closer to what would be yellow to the something that's closer to what would be yellow.
Speaker 2:You know, you may discover that I think some people, when they strike out on diets, they'll do. I've seen things like 1500 calories a day or something. Unless you're a tiny petite woman, that's that. If you're a dude and you're like anywhere close to American size, you're. That's probably way too little, you know. So. So, leaving room for failure and not beating yourself up and that can be the hardest thing in the world If you're consistently failing your daily things, taking that bigger goal, putting it on the shelf and saying I'm not going to beat myself up for doing this, I'm not going to abandon this, I'm not going to walk away from it. Doing this, I'm not going to abandon this, I'm not going to walk away from it. But right now that's just not doable for me.
Speaker 2:And then make something that is like. I've heard of this thing called the hard 75 and I've, and it's supposed to increase your self esteem and things of that nature and I've looked at what it takes to do the hard 75. If you fail a day, you got to start all over again. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we have hard and without knocking that, if you achieve the 75 hard, yeah, I imagine your self-esteem will be a lot higher. I imagine, when I look at the requirements of it, that somewhere between I would submit your self-esteem won't, because it's a completely controlled goal. Someone is telling you what to do it's not self-concordant no, it's not but even if it does increase your self-esteem, it it look the requirements of it.
Speaker 1:It's like they say it will like 10x your self-esteem, which is literally how do you measure?
Speaker 2:that well you can measure it and you cannot 10x it so you would have to have like a self-reported thing before and after there's a lot of validated self-esteem skills, but either way and you can't 10X it. When you look at the actual goals of it and you look at what you have to do to do the 75 hard. Probably 95% of normal people will not do it, Perhaps higher than 95%. So what about the 95% of people that embark on that and they don't get it? Yeah.
Speaker 2:If I could do anything, it would be like the easy 90 or something like that. Like read for 20 minutes, go for a walk, try to sleep at least six. Like have a list of 10 things, do three of them.
Speaker 1:But everyone can make that list for themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they can, they really can. And so if you're new to goal setting and this is all new start small, ease into it, little things that are worthwhile and make you feel better, and then go from there.
Speaker 1:Absolutely All right. Well, until next week's episode, stay strong.
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