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Shedding SMART Goals Final Audio: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

Shedding SMART Goals Final Audio

Shannon Tipton48min

Shannon Tipton

00:12

Music, Hello everyone, and welcome to another learning rebels, Coffee Chat, where all the cool L and D peeps hang out here. We discuss ideas, share experiences and stories about L and D specific topics. I'm Shannon Tipton, owner of learning rebels, where we strategically fix training that's broken and develop workplace learning that delivers desired business results. Well, it's 2025 and after taking some time off for the holidays, we're back in a big, hairy, audacious way. That's right. Today, the cool kids are talking about bee hags, big hairy, audacious goals. And it all started with the big question on the table, why is it that only 10% of the people who make New Year's resolutions are successful. Could it be that while trying to set ourselves up for success, we inadvertently set ourselves up for failure. We're good people. We write SMART goals, then we set off to try to conquer the world, and then it all collapses. But what if I told you that smart goals aren't sure SMART goals are great for short term success things that are very tactical in nature or very linear in nature. But if we're going to create big karya dashes goals for ourselves, we really need to start thinking differently about the goal setting process in general. This means starting by looking at goals through a positive rather than negative filter. Does this sound familiar? I must stop procrastinating, I must lose weight. I have to get organized. I need to communicate better. What all of those statements have in common is the negative filter that we see them through meaning that if they aren't achieved, then we must be a failure. Wouldn't it be better to put a more positive spin on our goals, especially at the beginning of the year, maybe treating them as a positive and purposeful intention? Well, it's time to shift our perspective and tackle this year's goal setting with a fresh, more effective and more positive mindset. So the big question on the table today, how can we shift from not so smart goals to be hacked and give things that matter most a chance for success? So without further ado, let's get to it all right now, in the newsletter that I sent out on Wednesday, I sent out an abridged version of this worksheet. This worksheet here has the worked example in it, so that way, after you leave here today, you'll be able to reconstruct what you are trying to do during this hour, because I'm sure what's going to happen is, after we have this conversation, you're going to want to take, and I hope you do take some time to think about your goals for the year, what you are hoping, both personally and professionally, and really set yourself up for success, you know, because, as I said in the newsletter, I've never been a huge fan of SMART goals. I think that they're okay for when you're trying to get some work tasks done, you know, projects that are very specific in nature, but in general, you know, to me, they're redundant. You've got specific, okay, measurable, okay and actionable? Well, I hope so, if you're going to measure them, I hope they're actionable and then you have relatable or relevant. Well, yeah, if they're actionable and measurable and specific, they should be, you know, relatable. They're yours. So to me, they're all just a little bit redundant in nature. And so I'm kind of curious to ask you, first, before we kick all of this off, what technique do you use, and if you use SMART goals, that's fine. Don't, don't let my opinion color what you are going to say. But I am curious, what do you use? Do you have a designated worksheet that you like to use, or a formula you like to use? Or do you use something you know? Are you using chat, GPT to now help you set your goals? What are you using to make your goals work for you? Heather, I'm with you. It takes so much training for people to be able to write SMART goals. I'm thinking that's not so smart. I'm thinking that's not so smart either. I think we can do it in an easier, more productive way. So who would like to start kick off the conversation, share with me what you're doing or what you have done in the past to help you try to meet your goals. I. How to start this conversation, because it's so mired and not only how we behave, but gosh, our our day to day, which for me, then blows up into like justifying the existence of Elegy. And so when I think about the goals themselves, just just breaking them down into something right that's actionable, whether it's an initiative, a measure, is the start for me, and that's where I posted on I use chat GPT conversationally to ideate like, Hey, I'm I have this need. And what ways could I think about measuring this? Or, you know what? What are some industry standards that we're seeing? And that helps. Sometimes it may not know and it's just getting me in the right mind frame. Other times, it gives me some really good insights, maybe in some areas that I'm newer in, in dealing with, like maybe some different industry standards. Thank you for that. Yeah, and I'm I'm using chat GPT for that too, and I love that you asked it, how can I measure something? I actually haven't asked it that. I think that's a really great question. And now I don't know if you've guys noticed, just sort of an aside, is that chat GPT, now I don't know if it's for the free users or for both, is that it also helps you do task lists. There's a little thing in there now that you can build task lists using it. So I thought that's interesting. I haven't tried it yet. We'll see how it goes. Maureen, I see your hand. Hello. Maureen, hello.

Maureen

06:29

How are you happy new year. So even before I get to the goals, I tend to use Mind Maps just to, kind of like, empty my head, just like, get it all out there before then it can start to gel and use the themes and start to break it down and identify what's a what's a project versus what's a, you know, what needs to be done in the near term, just kind of prioritizing, right?

Shannon Tipton

06:56

And I think that's important for us to map out as well. You know, long term, short term, medium term, etc. Okay, so now I'm going to start off though. I'm going to start off with a deeper question for you. Here we go. What we're going to do is I want us to think about time. Time is a construct, right? And we all have the same 360-520-4724, hours in a day that doesn't change. What changes, of course, is how we use that time, you know? And what I really want to do is I want to put something into perspective for us all. So here we go, get yourself a little piece of paper out. We're going to do some math, and you're like, No, not math. The reason we got into L, D is because we don't math. But here we go. All right, first off, on this piece of paper, I'd like you to write your age. Okay, get your age down. Now, when it comes to male the life expectancy in the US, where the average US male is 81 years. For females, it's 86 so I'm going to ask you to subtract that your age minus your life expectancy. But I'm going to assume that all of you, gentlemen's ladies and gentlemen, is we're all going to live to be 150 with the advent of medical technology.

Shannon Tipton

08:24

Oh God, I hope not, but

Shannon Tipton

08:27

we're all going to look like this. It's all going to be fine. Okay, so then we got the difference in years. Take those years and break it down into months. So how many months now I'd like you to break that down in determine how many weekends you have left. So if you say that there are 52 full weeks in a year, then that's 104 weekends approximately in a year. And so now we've kind of, what have we done? We've chunked down our lives. So how many weekends do you have left? You

Douglas

09:06

actually want an answer? Yeah. How many weekends? Or is that a theoretical question?

Shannon Tipton

09:13

The theoretical so you can share if you want, yeah, yeah. So I've just hit the big four. Oh, I've got 4692

Shannon Tipton

09:22

weekends. Okay,

Shannon Tipton

09:24

sounds like a musical.

Shannon Tipton

09:28

So if you you're looking at this number, and I'm not using a worksheet, I'm just shouting out the questions here for you. So for those of you who joined a little bit later, I'm I have not used a worksheet for this. So it's easier to think of it when we break it down and you go, okay, so Jose. 3328 weekends left. It's easier to think about your life goals when you put it into that perspective versus thinking, how many months do I have left? How many years do I have left, right? And then you can think. About this and go, Well, what can I do over the course of a weekend help me achieve my retirement goals, or to help me achieve whatever life goal you may have or hobby that you want to complete? Yep, so the calculation here that we're looking at, just to answer the question real quick, is your age, the US average minus your age. So again, the average 86 years for women, 81 for men. Meaning, then how many months left Do you have? And how many weekends left Do you have if you're using the total of approximately 104 weekends left in a year. And so when we break it down, things become more doable. So rather than me thinking, Oh, dang, I've got 26 years left in my life, man, that's depressing when you think about it like that. But if I do the math, and I think about how many weekends I have left, or how many months I have conceivably left in order to achieve some of the life things that I want to do. Then it becomes more possible. And so I'm not looking at this from, oh my gosh, be so depressed as to how many years you got left, but think about it as, how many, how many weekends do you have to enjoy and to learn? From, yes, thank you. Andrea, 104 weekend days, or 52 weekends. So when we think about this, this is where we're going to go. We're going to try and break down our goals today into manageable chunks so that it is not so overwhelming. So now that you have this in your mind, what I'd like you to think about is from a professional point of view and a personal point of view and or a personal point of view, what's on your list? And it could be for this year, it could be, you know, a retirement goal. It doesn't matter to me, yeah, so your goal is to move to three or four day work week so you have more weekends. Yeah, thank you. I love that Brandon. I'm all for that

Justine

12:04

Brandon. I almost choked on my water when I read that, man, that's awesome. That

Shannon Tipton

12:08

is awesome points for Brandon. Brandon wins the internet today. So think about it now. So personal goal, you could have a personal goal. It'd be great if you had both, right? So, yeah, one personal goal, maybe for the year, if you don't want to think too far out. And one professional goal, like, Do you have a big rock professional goal that you want to achieve? Now here's when I say a big rock goal that is not a checklist item. So a checklist item is to clear out my email box. That's a checklist item. I'm talking about a goal. Like your goal is, I want to, I want a new gig, or I want a promotion, or I want to, you know, implement this new LMS project, you know, without people killing me or me killing them. See, there you go. Noelle, chat, GPT says that I can achieve fluency in two to three foreign languages with all of my weekend days left. Boom, two to three. That means you can at least achieve one. Let's do one. Yes. Chat G, P, T is lying to you. Okay. Now I did put the the worksheet out. Put it in again for those people who came late and maybe aren't, maybe missed it, there you go. There's our big rock worksheet. So what I want to do now is work with you guys to break your goals down. Now here is something that I mentioned in the in the email that I sent out to everybody. Is one of the problems that I think we see when it comes to goal setting is that we see them through a negative filter. So how many of you had goals like, I need to lose weight, I need to stop eating junk food, I need to be smarter, better, faster, in something? How many of you had goals that were phrased like that? No. Brand is like, No, I'm a positive thinker. Maureen, yeah, I've had goals phrased like that. I have to, and I think we'd all be lying to ourselves if we didn't, at some point write down a goal that said I need to, you know, drink more, healthier stuff, eat less fried foods, lose 10 pounds, etc. Stop smoking. Stop working so late, stop having my work interfere with my personal life. Goals that work on the premise of stop doing something is that we're looking at these goals through a negative filter. We're looking at them almost in a punitive nature, because if I don't stop doing something, then I've failed, which is not necessarily bad, per se, but you don't want to start out that way, which you what I'm asking you to do. So when you look at the. Big Rock goal sheet. One of the things that we talk about here is your motivation. Why is it that you want to do the thing? And so if you think about, well, why do I want to lose a few pounds? Well, maybe it's because I want all of those weekends that we just worked out. I don't want those weekends cut short. I want to get all the weekends I can possibly get. If the goal then, is to lose weight, be healthier, live a long life, be present for my children, be present for your grandchildren, then that's the goal. Why it is that you want to be healthier, that's the motivation. That's the positive element that I'd like us to focus on for those of you who are new, this actually is like the third or fourth year we've done this particular exercise. It's kind of an annual activity, and it takes training. It takes a like a reset button, right? It's a reset to how we think and to think in that more positive way. And for me, it's a change in vocabulary. Everybody's going to have a different perspective on this. And what I find is that my vocabulary fails me with this. So I say things like, oh, I should have, I should have done this, or I really shouldn't have done that, and it really places a judgment on yourself as to whether or not you've achieved something or are going to achieve something. And sometimes it just stops you another habit that I have done in the past is, oh, I really need to do that. And that just gives you almost an internal excuse. It's like, oh, I need to, but I won't. I need to, but I can't, you know, I need to, but I need to, but there's always a but that follows that, you know? And I've tried to promise myself not to do that, you know, I I'm going to move forward and be more affirmative and what I want to accomplish, you know? So I think it's that internal dialog of how we treat our goals. So now I'm going to ask you this question, if you could do anything, I'll put it in the chat, just for visual sake. If you could do anything, and money, education or skills were not a barrier, what would you do? Travel more nothing. I'm nothing. My goal is to do nothing. I like it, or I wouldn't change anything happy with what you're doing. Become a philanthropist. Oh, that's nice travel for sure. Yes. Allow myself to go down learning rabbit holes. Be a landscape photographer, a baker. Play the banjo, right? Since have a ministry, write a book and do a lot of playing. I love all of that. I love all of that. Connie be an oceanographer. That's fascinating. I love this. Write a novel series, visit Nigeria, learn the piano. That's all fabulous. That's all fabulous. So then what stops us from doing a lot of these things is because we haven't won. We haven't written it down. Do you know that old saying, a goal without a deadline is just a dream? And maybe it is money, but maybe it's not money. Maybe we use money conveniently. We use time conveniently. Bucket list visit all the places from Disney Soren, is that a movie? What is that? I don't know what that is. It's a ride. It's a Oh, it's a ride. It's been many a moon since I've been to Disneyland or world. We need to fix you. Is it California soaring? Specifically, not

Justine

18:56

anymore. They got rid of it at a couple years ago. They brought California Soren back last year for a short time. So it has things like the Taj Mahal Fiji, the Sydney Opera House castle in Germany, the pyramids, the iguazano falls in Brazil, Disneyland,

Shannon Tipton

19:22

Paris, there we go, well, or visit all the places that are focused on the strip, right? So if you go to Vegas, you walk down the strip. I want to go to Egypt, to Paris, to New York, right? There you go. See. I can relate to that all right now. So this means, then, if we're going to accomplish any of that. And if we take money out of the equation, if we take time out of the equation, that means we need to build some B hags. And this is professional too, you know. So maybe a professional goal for you is to retire early, or maybe you want to promote. Population. Or maybe you just want to do something differently in your professional life. Maybe you're tired of developing e learning, and maybe you want to be more of a facilitator. I don't know, whatever is happening in your professional life. Maybe you want to change industries, right? Or maybe change departments, so it's perfectly okay for your aspirational goal to be professionally driven. There's nothing wrong with that. But then it's about planning it, and now it's about planning it, right? And how do we get there from here? Well, how we get there from here is we use our big rock goal sheet, and that big rock goal sheet is B, hag driven. So what this means is it's you've got your goal, and it should be uplifting, right? Stops shoulda, coulda. Woulda is left out. We need to allow for structure and create those positive triggers. Now, behag, goal. So right now, what I'd like you to do is think about this. And you don't have to download this worksheet. If you don't want to, or need to at this point, just write this down on a piece of paper. So we're going to start with number one. So number one is, what is the behag goal? And the example that I put inside the worked example of that worksheet is a professional one. And so for learning rebels, it's to really continue to build on the learning rebels capability model, which is something that I've been structuring for a while now. And I really want to fine tune this in this year. I want to get it down to something something so if somebody's going to be a learning rebel, what does that mean? What kind of skills does that mean? How do you apply that in your real life, rather than it just being an aspirational type of title? And for me, I'm going to pinpoint a completion date of April, because you got to have something, something to strive for. Number one, right? Oh, see you're never gonna let me live this down. Are you, Douglas, never? Yeah, I see you. I see you making fun of me. Okay, then motivation. So what's the why is that goal important? So that's step number two. Why is the goal important? And I think this is sometimes where you know, where you might put, where SMART goals intersect. You know, why is it important? Because if it's not important to you or to your life or to your progress, then it's not really going to be achieved. If it's someone else's goal, it needs to be yours. See all you laughing at the book margins? Well, I've been hanging out for way too long, for those of you who remember the book margin conversation, all right, so now what's important? Here's the important bit. The important bit is to chunk this down. You have to. It's the same concept as if you were working on a like a to do list item. So rather than on my to do list, I don't write, write a blog. I write that the steps, what steps does it take for me to get a blog post out there? First off, I need to get the back end of my website working again. That would be nice. That's a whole different issue for a whole nother day. So if you haven't seen a blog post for me in a while, that's why I can't get into my admin page now. So then, what are the steps that it takes? It takes research. I got to write a crappy first draft, then I got to write a semi crappy second draft, right? So you got to do all of these things, and so those are the things that actually go in the to do list, rather than the big rock item. So this is what I'm going to ask you to do. Now, break down this goal into actionable chunks. Somebody want to be brave and share with me or share with the group, but one of your goals is

Justine

24:02

speak at a larger L, D Conference. There

Shannon Tipton

24:07

we go. Yes, I love that, and we've worked together on that, right? And so then, then that's a fabulous goal. So the goal here is to be able to speak at conferences, right? Speak wider, larger conferences. So then what is the logical first chunk of that?

Justine

24:28

Reconnect with some more local chapters. Okay? Has been kind of chit chatting with a guy named Gary Van Antwerp, some of you might

Shannon Tipton

24:41

Oh, yeah. Well, right training. Mag,

Justine

24:44

yep, so right. Try to get a little grassroots, yep, put the name out there practice and see things that are working and things that are not working to tweak. And then just keep. Building off of those, all of it will be wins, right? If it goes over, great, win. If it doesn't, I get to fix it, still win,

Shannon Tipton

25:08

right, right? And everything that you just said, though, those are several different chunks all built in the one statement, right? So networking is one chunk. Let's find the connections of people who can help you is one chunk. The next chunk is to work on the topic, right? The next chunk is the topic. What am I going to talk about? Where am I being seen as a subject matter expert, right? You know? And then the next one is maybe, that's the practice, practice, practice, practice. And so, yeah, there we go. Use chat GPT to help with your first draft and then refine your prompt. Your prompts. There you go. Yeah. Use chat G P t as a helper, right? So then when you break it down into chunks like that, then it becomes much more manageable. So you say, okay, so then the first chunk here. So my, my first one, as it says on the list here, is to differentiate L, D capabilities with learning rebel capabilities. So I've got to be able to say, well, you can be an L and D specialist or a generalist. That's okay, but what makes a learning rebel, what makes that different? I've got to figure that out first. And so with Douglas, he's got to figure out, well, who's the best, where's my best networking opportunities? Who do I need to contact with? And maybe it's people outside of L D. Maybe it's Toastmasters, or maybe it's like the professional speaking Association, right? So maybe it's something outside of L D to get you into L and D, right? So that's what I mean by breaking it down. Andrea,

Andrea

26:44

for me, the step that's between two and three is that somebody else said mind mapping, you know? And I hopefully I end up with, what are the tracks that I need, because it's not all going to be one track, right? Some of it is networking, like you said, and then development and all that. So if I haven't done that between two and three, and I know in my mind that I don't trust these chunks, because I may not have thought of something, you know, so I don't trust it that well yet. So for me, that step would be then just mind mapping, put everything down that I could possibly think of, and then chunk those to what makes sense, either in a track, what's the next step I need to take, or, you know, what are the tracks anyway? If that helps. No,

Shannon Tipton

27:29

I love that. I think that's a great idea. I think mind mapping between two and three is a wonderful idea. I actually sort of intuitively do that, you know. So it's one of those maybe unspoken steps for me that I should have spoken on this worksheet, but I think that that's a great that's a great way to go. Yeah, then it does help you to configure the chunks, one, two and three, but then also helps you. You can go back to that mind map, and you can think All right, so now, what are going to be my action steps? Right? So that mind map next to that chart helps you with your action steps. So Justine, what

Shannon Tipton

28:10

can help with the chunking? I listened to Mel Robbins podcast on six steps to achieve a goal, and it was really excellent. I really recommend it. And one of the things that you recommend is, you know, once you've identified your goal and you've written it down, when you're actually looking at how to go about achieving it, is to find the formula. Because she says, most of the goals that we going for, somebody is already done, and probably somebody's written about it as well. They've written a blog about it, or a post or whatever, and to go and find that formula and see what somebody else has done and how they went about it, that

Shannon Tipton

28:51

is such a great comment that could be like action step number one, that could be in bold and permanently put there. So the first step that we're always going to take is whether or not someone's done it before, because we do that when we do a training analysis, don't we? It's like, has this been done before? Has this been done successfully? We asked that question. So why not ask that question of ourselves? I love that. That's so great. Justine, thank you. You're welcome. And so I think that that's an ever present action step there, right? And so then with the chunks again, it's what's the completion date of the chunk? We have to keep track of that, otherwise we lose track of the weekends, right? So you know the time passing already. It's January 17, and two weekends have passed, and here we and here I am, right. It's like, Oh, I haven't even tackled this yet, because I've got other things that have bubbling up on my plate. But when you start looking at it and you move it into your calendar. So if you do weekly planning or monthly plan. Planning now's the opportunity to move these chunks into your calendar, not necessarily as a goal that needs to be completed, but as a reminder that this is where I need to be at this stage, and this is where tools like, you know, Trello or Asana or Monday, you know, those sorts of tools can really be helpful, that you can set these reminders up to work towards completing these chunks, if you like, right? Okay, so then we've got the action steps, so we break down each chunk into an action step. So for me, so the chunk number one was the differentiate led capabilities. Chunk number two, identify key skills that underpin those capabilities. And three, build resources to support the skills. Now for Douglas, so his first chunk might be okay. Where can I find people to help me? Two, where do I ascertain my subject matter expertise? It could be and this is what I discovered through my years of speaking, is that one it changes. You know, I talk both about things that I'm really good at and things that I'm passionate about, and I find that those things change. So then it's about, well, what am I good at? And it could be a list of things. And that's another mind map activity, perhaps, where you think about subject matter expertise that people want to hear about. And then, for me, an action item underneath that would be to Google it or to keyword search it. Because if you do a keyword search on, let's say, communication, and you find that a lot of people are searching that keyword on Google, then that might be worth talking about, right? And so then it's all right, how how do I get here? How do I get there from here? And then the last one is the practice part. So then, all right, how do I build those action steps? Do I volunteer at the Career Center so I can get some practice in. Do I volunteer at the local high school? Maybe they have a speech class or a debate class or something that I can volunteer at. You know? So thinking about those practice opportunities of, how do I how do I hone this? And that's where all of the action steps come in. And then those action steps get moved into your calendar. Those are the ones that get moved into a to do list, because without the action steps, the chunk doesn't happen. Without the chunks, then the B hag doesn't happen. Okay. Now the next part here is to identify the triggers and barriers, so the things that are going to get in the way of success. I like to do this now, get it out of the way, get the negative thoughts out of the way, you know. And a lot of times and and I wrote it down here, actually good on me for writing it down. One of the big barriers is imposter syndrome. You know, it's and I think a lot of us experience it, and we've had coffee chats about it. It's something that is a work in progress for me, and I'm sure for a lot of other people, but you've got to realize it up front that you're going to have those thoughts of in this particular case, of why is why is this important? Why would people care? Why do people care? And then I have, you know, 30 of you in front of me, and I'm like, oh, okay, there's somebody out there that cares. So here we are, right? And so then there's that moment, and then the complexity trap is the other barrier where it's easy to fall into too many things to make it too difficult. So don't do that. Shannon, I do have a tendency to overthink things and make things more complicated than they need to be, which is why some of my subject matter expertise is simplifying things. Is because I spent a lifetime working on uncomplicating myself, and so then with the first chunk, so it's going back up. So it's like, okay, we've got our first our chunk number one, under the bee head goal, which is the things that we need to complete. So that means all of this aligns. So if you look at the spreadsheet, chunk number one for your triggers and barriers fits under chunk number one for the things we want to accomplish, as well as those action steps, right? So on. So you got chunk number one, what are the barriers? Chunk number two, what are the barriers? And three, what are the barriers? And so then Douglas for you, when we think about chunk number one, which is about, how do I find the right people, or finding the right people, network opportunities, etc. What are some of the barriers you see for yourself,

Justine

34:49

getting off my posterior and just getting her done.

Shannon Tipton

34:55

Get her done. That's it. Okay. So jumping up. Getting it done. What might be another barrier?

Justine

35:02

Uh, seriously, personally, I hate social media. Like that is not my jam in any way, shape or form, like I don't even, nor have I ever had a Facebook account. So that in itself, barrier, okay,

Shannon Tipton

35:21

good. And so then you got to create action steps to get around that. If that's still the path that you want to go down, and somebody else may say that a barrier is, I don't want to reach out, because there's a certain amount of fear of rejection, right? So if I reach out to somebody, if I reach out to Shannon, maybe she'll never answer me, or maybe she'll give me an answer I don't like, right? And so there's, there's always that part,

Justine

35:45

that part's not the bother,

Shannon Tipton

35:49

that part's not the problem, right? But there's tell

Justine

35:51

me no, that's just a disguised Yes.

Shannon Tipton

35:56

That's a practice for a Yes, right? And that's good, because a lot of people have that mentality, and others not so much. So that's why it's important to recognize what some of these barriers can be. And then the last part of it is to get in front of it, once you realize what the barriers can be, then plan for those barriers. Because if you don't plan for the barriers. The goal is not going to get accomplished Dollar Point. Okay? So then all of this leads to what can you do to get in front of the things that you think are going to hold you up? And then it's about prioritization of the chunks and of the action steps. And so when you wrote down the action steps in step number four was the action steps. What I recommend there is that you just brain dump, brain dump the action steps. But then you have to take time after you figure out your barriers, now that I know what's going to get in my way of success. What does that do to the prioritization of the things I need to do? Does that add to my action list? So if you say that social media is not your thing and you wanted to continue for it not to be your thing, then an action step is, how do I get in front of people without using social media that becomes, that becomes a very real action step is figuring that out, and you're right it. It is uncomfortable to think about that, because I'm asking you, because the first thing I did was to ask you to put a positive spin on this. But this is thinking with a positive mindset, because what you're doing is you're facing the barrier, and you're going to be positive about jumping over that barrier. And when you jump over the barrier, then everything else looks more bright and shiny. It looks more doable, right? Exactly, Erica, you're you're almost overcoming your own objection, so from a sales perspective, right? So we're overcoming our own objections, and then plan for reassessment. You know, you always have to flex and adapt. Things happen in life. Things happen with your mindset. You know, your priorities change, and maybe it'll be like, you know, what the capabilities thing? Maybe that's a dead end. Maybe I need to focus somewhere else. I'll focus somewhere else, you know, so then it's a matter of reassessing, but reassessing at an appropriate time. So you don't want to give up too soon, but you don't want to wait too late, right? So now that's going to be different for each of you, and which is why, you know, I suggest that you go back and you look at this, make it a monthly calendar item for you to go back and assess your action items, so that way you can go, You know what? This is really getting nowhere, and I don't see it going anywhere right now. So maybe I need to one start over, or maybe I just need to pick something else to focus on Justine.

Justine

39:02

So last year, I set a big, hairy, audacious goal to run the marathon, and it was totally out of my comfort zone. I don't have great knees, I I'm not a natural runner, but I just felt like I've got one marathon in me, and I want to give it a go. And so I got a great training program, and that sort of relates to that formula idea as well. But as you know, it broke down the tasks and chunks that were like, every day it was doable. I was like, okay, I can do that. But then the next day I had to do something again, and the next day I had to do something. There was that consistency thing. But then when, when it started getting towards the pointy end of the training, and it started to get really hard, I would sit at my desk like, anticipating the the hill run that or the hill repeats I had to do that evening. I was just like, Oh my God. Like, you know, do I really and all of them. And then I realized that I was actually. Were arguing against myself, because there was nobody that was waiting there on the hill saying, This is what we're going to be doing today and everything. And I just burst out laughing one afternoon, because I was like, I'm actually just arguing against myself.

Shannon Tipton

40:14

That would be liberating, wouldn't it? Yes. Definitely. Round of applause for that realization. And oh my gosh, that is such a true statement. Because, yeah, nobody is there at the bottom of the hill or at the top of the hill, you know, throwing tomatoes at you. You know, you're doing it to yourself, right? And I think that's, I think it's a great realization that's got that has to be very freeing, you know. So Justine, did that change your how you approached it?

Justine

40:47

Oh, absolutely, yeah, because I just realized, you know what, nobody else around me actually cares whether I achieved this goal, but I care like you were saying, identifying why it's important to you. I used to go back to that

Shannon Tipton

40:59

absolutely, you know. So I would encourage you to take this worksheet and reconfigure it or reproduce it in a way that's comfortable for you. So the way that I wrote it here, to me is a it's a process. Goal setting is a process. My brain works that way. I break almost everything down into process steps. So for me, that's the process that works. I do not suggest that you take it out of order. I think this order is important. However, write it if you want to do it in journal form. Do it in journal form if you want to, you know, create a mind map out of it. Do that if you want to create a flow chart out of it. Do that if you want to set a chat GPT reminder for this. Do that, you know, make it fit into whatever workflow is going to work for you. Here's a tech tip for you. Set yourself up a calendar reminder, but don't just set it up in the calendar. Write yourself an email and schedule it for the future. So after you get this worksheet filled out, figure out what you want to do now. Write yourself some positive, motivating emails, set them up at the appropriate times that you have set up on your worksheet and schedule them out so that way you receive them. One, it will re motivate you. Two, it might remind you of what your goals were in the first place. And three, it might get you back on track if you got off track, and if you want to get back on track. Now, what other tips can we give to each other in these last few moments? Who would like to speak up? Nothing like being a nag to yourself? Exactly, exactly. No, I think somebody already said it. It's all about want. None of these goals are going to do anything if you really don't want to do it. Yeah, you're right, and that's why that second step there? That the motivator, right? Yeah, the why behind why do I really want to do this? So it's not really necessarily about relevance or what's in it for me, it's just more about, how will this affect my life? Will this, will this give me more weekends? Will this make my weekends better, even if it's going to give me more weekends, or it's going to make my life better, do I really want that? No true, and I think that's the conversations that you all need to have with yourself as we leave here, right? I was just going to say in regards to the want, there's also maybe something here that we haven't cracked into, that I realized, and it's about being able to speak that truth to those that support you and, you know, finding a way of having accountability with in maybe various capacities, you know, so that there's like we just had Justine share with us she ran her marathon, and being able to help that person celebrate the, you know, the smaller steps and things like that. So I think that that's also important that we didn't really touch upon here. Thank you very much. No, I think that's a great point, and maybe that's a step 7.1 right is find your group. Find your people, find your people that are going to help you with your goals. Reach out, be part of that community. You know who's out there that can help you have the wins. You have an accountability partner, something everybody should have one of those. Chris Cole, Donato, she would. She's mine, and so everybody needs to have that help. All right. Speaking of help resources, our next Coffee Chat. So for those of you who are this is the first time you're with us, our coffee chats happen every other week, so not next week, but the week after, to continue on this theme of working to lift you because our our chats usually are about how you can help your business or help how you can help your people. How we can help you to further that conversation on during this first quarter, is our book share. So that's another annual event that we have, is our book and resource share. So things like bring with you your favorite book, the YouTube channel you like to watch, the podcast you'd like to listen to, we're going to share all of these pieces of information that can help us continue to grow as people or as L and D professionals, and how they those resources might help somebody achieve their begs, or how it's helping you achieve yours. And so let's carry on this conversation in two weeks, and the registration is the same as it was for this one, and I hope to see everyone there. So hopefully have a great weekend. Anybody got any fun things planned for the weekend?

Justine

45:54

I probably have something cool planned. I just haven't been told what it is.

Shannon Tipton

45:59

Oh, see, there you go. There you go. I know I'm gonna be watching the games. That's my entire that's, that's my entire plan for the weekend.

Justine

46:09

All right, bills are Ravens. Oh, that's

Shannon Tipton

46:11

a hard one, right? That's not hard at all. Oh, Jason,

Justine

46:17

lay it out. What is it builds. Shot the

Douglas

46:22

fire. Thank

Shannon Tipton

46:30

you everyone for hanging out with us for another learning rebels, coffee chat now, here's the takeaway, the key to unlocking your true potential. Stop limiting yourself with smart goals, and start understanding the why and reframe your goals to more positive statements. As we look back on today's conversation, we realize that it's not about smart so much as it is about chunking it down and about fully embracing the bigger and bolder goals that you hope to achieve to improve yourselves, personally and professionally. As Justine pointed out when she was talking about setting a goal for running marathons, no one around me really cares whether or not I reach this goal, but I care, and it's important to understand why it matters to me personally. This really highlights the importance of setting goals that resonate with your own values and your vision. It's not just about setting goals that others expect from you. So on that note, in the show notes below is a list of all of the resources that we discussed. Now, are you ready to step up your skills and knowledge? Then join us live. You know how it works? Head over to learning rebels.com check out the Events page and sign on up. Now don't forget to check out The Learning rebels community, where you can have an opportunity to connect with other cool L and D professionals. In the meantime, stay curious. Be rebellious and take over the world. Bye for now, you

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