Episode #011 - 2023 Reflections & Crafting goals for 2024

Transcript

Speaker: Hello and welcome back to Perspective. This is the first episode of 2024 so welcome back and I hope you had a nice break. If you have not yet shaken the Christmas blues off yet, we are a couple of weeks into January so hopefully we're starting to get back into a routine.

Speaker: And if you've not done so yet, don't worry about it. This is a good opportunity to sit down and reflect on last year. We're going to have a little look at goal setting in this episode. No guess this week, but it's quite a hot topic, especially in January. So going to have a little few prompts really just to reflect upon last year. And then hopefully you can take some actions away to go and start setting some goals for yourself.

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Speaker: So, most of us like to enter the new year with some goals that you wish to achieve, perhaps in personal finance, it may be your career, your health and fitness, whatever it may be. January is a great time to reset. It's the equivalent of the, I will start on Monday. So as humans, we love black and white. We love rounding up to the next start point or the next point at which we can reset.

Speaker: January often feels like that. There's a lot of people around you, colleagues, friends and family that are all setting their goals for the year and using it while their motivation is high to set some goals and really sort of get stuck into doing what they're doing. But then we get close to February and the motivation starts to fizzle out a bit. The gym gets a bit more quiet. One day of missed habits turns into two. And before you know it, the month has passed and we've not done the things we wanted to.

Speaker: Why? Well, first point, it's really difficult. Making changes very very hard, especially when you've wired yourself a certain way, with certain habits. So forming new ones can be very difficult. Now this is not my area of expertise, but I will direct you to a good resource which I think you should all take a look at.

Speaker: He's on YouTube and is a book. James Clear, he's written a book called Atomic Habits. It's a great resource to look out on how to start forming habits effectively and how to make sure that you're continuing the cycle rather than falling off the wagon after day three.

Speaker: Now, the second point I'd say is that the goals are not your own. People often fall off the wagon with their goals because the goals that they upset themselves are not their own. It's a trap many people fall into. It's a trap that we see a lot of people around us fall into. Those goals are portrayed by their idols on social media, perhaps their friends, their family, or a bit of encouragement from other people to go, oh, maybe you try this one.

Speaker: That's all well and good, there's nothing wrong with people giving you ideas for goals and it's a good starting point.

Speaker: It can matter when we start to get into the point where it starts to become a bit difficult. So when the motivation and the hype around January starts to die down, we are no longer focused on using that external motivation of other people achieving their goals. So therefore we feel like we have to do it as well. But we need something else that will help us to keep going because that extrinsic motivation will start to wear off as we start to get into the year.

Speaker: So we need to find goals that are meaningful to us, not borrowed goals. These are good as a starting point, but we need to find intrinsically motivating goals. So intrinsic motivation is defined as the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than from some separable consequence.

Speaker: Whereas on the other hand, extrinsic is doing something for the reward. So that could be praise from others, compliments on social media, whatever it may be. And here is where understanding the difference between the two can help.

Speaker: By finding something that is aligned with you as a person, your values, that can be very intrinsically motivating and it is more likely to yield a greater satisfaction and you're more likely to adhere to achieving those goals without relying on the other people around you for motivation in the law.

Speaker: You do it because it either interests you or you absolutely love it. And when there are times when the motivation wears off and denying those times or denying that those times exist to yourself is just kidding yourself because we all know there are times where you really don't want to do stuff and those are the times where we need to push through and be able to do it in order to keep us on track and focused and working towards

Speaker: achieving those goals. So when the motivation wears off you are more likely to keep working towards the goal without punishment of not doing it. And here's a good exercise to do. Think back to last year. Are the goals which you set yourself last year that you didn't achieve or perhaps they were set the year before that and then you would just roll them on to the following year?

Speaker: If so, why do you think that is? Is it because the goal you've set yourself is something you really believe in or is it something that is someone else's goal? Therefore, you do not truly value its importance and it's not that applicable to you and your life. Good exercise to do, have a think about it. Perhaps there's been a few, I've definitely got a few myself.

Speaker: Okay, so how do we find our own goals? With that in mind, if we've talked about internal and external motivation or intrinsic and extrinsic, how do we find our own goals that are perhaps aligned to our values? Well, there's three goals or three prompts I've used this year which may help you. You can take this as far as you like with the number of resources that are available online. There's a lot of templates out there.

Speaker: that can really take you down the rabbit hole to reflect on every aspect of your life, facet of your life. But to keep it simple and actionable, I've boiled it down to three questions and coined these with different areas of my life. So the pillars of life have gone for a sort of career, I've gone for personal development, relationships and personal finance. Three questions.

Speaker: Reflect on 2023 using three questions in each of these areas. What went well? What did not go so well? And what did I learn?

Speaker: Now to do this, I have used my phone to look back through photos of what had happened in each month, try and recall what you were doing and use the prompts to understand the lessons from each. Now sit down, take a chunk of time to do this in the quiet.

Speaker: You're not behind if you haven't done it yet but please try not to leave it any longer, find the elements of last year that you enjoyed, find the ones that you found less enjoyable and think about how you felt in each of these scenarios.

Speaker: You may have had a setback in your career, you may have really enjoyed some time you spent with your family, you may have started reading again that you really loved doing, visiting old friends, spending more time with loved ones, being a bit more sociable this year, whatever it may be. Really take the time to think about what you really enjoyed, what scenarios that you didn't enjoy so much, and think about the lessons from each.

Speaker: So for me, I have a goal this year of looking at my mobility because I work at a desk and some days I feel I'm about 90 years old, even though I'm much much less old than 90.

Speaker: But that is gonna be one of my goals. I really want to get to the point where I can move without pain and without tension and really start to sort of move a bit better and reduce some of the ailments that I think have been caused by me being inactive and kind of neglecting it for the past year.

Speaker: Okay, so with this list, you're going to see how you can try and create more of the situations you enjoyed. And note down, if a situation was to occur again, perhaps one that you didn't like, how would you respond differently knowing what you know now from last year? Would it be different? Would it be the same? Hopefully it wouldn't be the same, but what would you do that'd be different? How would you respond? What are the lessons that you've learned from this?

Speaker: Goals can be very overwhelming, but they needn't be. We can use frameworks such as Smart, which is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time -bound. And have a look at some resources online if you want to have a look at that in a bit more detail.

Speaker: We can use that to dial in the focus and give us a deadline to focus on and work towards for each individual goal. Okay so Parkinson's law states that work expands to fit the time available so by time boxing goals it gives you a sense of urgency to work on those goals immediately whereas if we did not put that on there you may find we're another year down the line and you didn't quite achieve what you wanted to do.

Speaker: Okay, so taking what we just discussed there, we've looked at what we enjoyed last year, what went well, what did not go so well, and what you learn. Think about how you can now start to create goals around that. So if it's something you didn't like last year, perhaps take my example there of my own mobility. I was suffering quite a lot with stiff hips and a tight back last year.

Speaker: Instead of complaining about it, I knew it wasn't going to get any better without me doing something about it. So I've made it a priority for me this year to start trying to do a little bit of 15 minutes of daily mobility just to sort of start loosening off my joints, making sure I'm offsetting the degradation caused by sitting at a desk all day. And that's one of my goals. So think about how you can implement that using the lessons you just learned.

Speaker: to create some new goals. You don't need 50 goals. You could start with two or three and split them down into perhaps quarters, what you want to achieve in the first quarter. And then if you want to go into a more granular detail as you get into it, you can do so.

Speaker: Okay, so think about the key pillars of life, got work or career, you got your relationships, you got finance, and your sort of personal development as well. As I say, go and have a look, see if there's any other tools you want to use online. See what information you can gather.

Speaker: There is no right or wrong answer here but it's a really good chance to start the year off with some focus and ensure that you do not reach the end of the year filled with regret that you didn't do anything you wanted to. Making sure these goals are quite personal to you, you're not just borrowing goals from other people that are meaningless and really making sure we can make 2024 a very good year for all of us. Okay, thank you very much and I'll see you in the next one.

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