Goal Setting

Hello and welcome. I am your host, Joseph Devlin, and today we're going to discuss goal setting. So let's get at it.

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So today I'm going to share with you

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a goal setting strategy that I've used that's extremely easy, can be done in less than 30 minutes. And then I have used with myself, as well as with others, and have found it to

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be extremely effective.

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Now, when I'm talking about goal setting, I really want to acknowledge the fact that you don't have to do goal setting just once a year. It could be something you do quarterly, or could be something that you do anytime you recognize or realize a goal that you want to achieve or an objective that you need to meet. And one of the great things I like about doing goal setting is the fact that it gives my mind. There's a huge neuroscience behind this, but it gives my mind something else to look at and think about. And this is very beneficial for everyone, but especially for for those of us who have a loved one who's in addiction, which can can become very, very consuming. So now I'm going to have the opportunity to program my brain as well as help invite my community to think about a different way of living with me. So the first part I want to say is that I'm going to say is, let's talk about like, what goals do you want? And for me, if, if I say that, and that's that frightens you, I'm right alongside of you. It wasn't too long ago when those questions were asked of me, like, what goals do I have in my life? And I didn't really have any, that came to mind, and it absolutely scared me, because I was like, Well, I want a better life, and, you know, I want a better family, and I want to have a career, and I want to have this, but I didn't really know what those goals were. I didn't really know how to tap into them. And I had to say to the person, I don't know, I don't know, I don't have any goals. And they were like, sure, you do. And one of the next questions that they asked me is, well, like, what do you like to do? And again, I was kind of like, frozen. I was like, I don't know. Like, what do I like to do? And they were like, just sit with this and think about it. And as I started thinking about that, they're like, you know, is there something you've always wanted to do, something you were good at? And then all of a sudden, like, the first one unlocks for me is, oh, photography. I've always loved photography, all right. Jot that down. And then that unlocked. The next thing was like coaching. I always wanted to be a coach, and that started unlocking things where I came up with a list of 50 things that I wanted to do, you know, 50 different goals that I had. So you know, if those questions help unlock inside of you some goals that you have for yourself. Definitely utilize them. Go after them. You know, some other questions that sometimes I'll ask of folks when we're doing goal setting is like, you know, what is what is something you want to achieve? What is something you love doing? When you were a kid, I've really grown to appreciate this question, which is, if I can wave a magic wand and I can you could do anything you want, what would it be? And that's so important when we're going about and we're looking at the the what's behind our goal, because let's not worry about how we're going to achieve it at this point. Want to do is say, okay, what are some of the things that you that you absolutely want to do

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and or something that you've always wanted to do.

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So as as you're writing these down, I'm going to say it's just like, just keep writing them down. Don't worry about what you know, how you're phrasing them, the word edge. Just keep writing them down. And one of the things that I do before I sit down and I begin writing down my goals as i i invite God in. Hey, God help me to write this goal list. And if I'm looking for other areas, you know, I'm still trying to jog my memory here a little bit. Think about areas, maybe in the areas of like your home, your business, your finances, health, charity. Say, Okay, what do I want to do with those? And just start jotting them down. And as those come to you. You're going to see that, like, things will come to you, such as, like, hey. You want to travel. You know, I want to have better relationships with my family. I want to weigh 190 pounds. I want to have a better relationship with God. I want to do a collaboration project at work with Larry. I want to have X number of dollars in a savings account. I want to be more connected with a community group. I want to be donating $25 a month to Habitat for Humanity. Just jot them all down, right? And you'll see that some of the naturally, as I was letting them flow, had like specific targets on that, and we'll want to talk about that in just a moment, such as, like, I want to weigh 190 pounds. That's a great goal to have, right? I It's measurable. It's factual. I see it something like, I want to travel. Okay? Now I'm going to, you know, want to tease that out a little bit like, where do I want to travel to? Is it Israel? Is it Alabama? Like, where is it that I want to go? And same thing with like, hey, I want to have a better relationship with my family. What's that going to

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look like? How do I, how do I measure

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that piece of having a better relationship with my family? Is that having dinner once a week? And then, of course, like, when you have something like, I want to be donating $25 a month to Habitat for Humanity, measurable, I see it. And so I get all those like, kind of the What's that I want to be doing? Write them down. I'm really going to encourage you, put down at least 24 and, you know, and do it for the year, right? Do 24 for the year. You may have more. That's okay, but like, kind of at least go for that number. And now, so we put the what down. And now I want to say is, want to take a look at the why. And I take this why from Simon Sinek. He uses this format. It's too blank. So that blank, so, and this is all for writing your why behind your what. So the why is the two, which is like that contribution and so that will be your impact. So I'll give you like, like, an example, you know, I want to travel. So, like, I'd say, to travel to nations, so that I release his kingdom. So, hey, the contribution as well as the impact, you know, I could say, hey, I want to live a life of adventure so that I can experience all God has for me. And any of these will will work like I want to have a better relationship with my family, you know, you know, to have a better relationship with my family so that we can have fun together. That's you're tying in this why? And what I know is that as I can specify what I want and I really want it, which is that why I'm more likely to achieve or get it. And as I'm tying in that why, what will often happen is I'll end up drilling down so being able to actually make it more measurable. So let's go back to even when I was saying traveling to the nations, I could say, Ah, I want to travel to Ireland so that I can release this kingdom. And you're going to just naturally want to be more specific, so that you can say, Hey, I know that I'm achieving these goals, and as I'm breaking these down, I mean, the neuroscience behind this is just by me simply talking about this right now. I'm getting excited about the the opportunity to go to Ireland, and I'm releasing dopamines within my own body, so I'm getting excited. I'm getting a chance to share something with all of you, and like, just my whole being becomes, like, electrified. So we won't discount the the point that dopa means being released as you're just simply writing down your list. And I want you to know is that really you know, only about 70% of people actually even write down goals, and only 10% actually follow along with the goals that they write down. So if you've already started writing down goals, just as we're talking

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you're doing amazing. You're doing more than the general population normally would. So I want us to say that we've looked at like the the what? And now we've looked at the why, and as we've got these feelings coming inside of us, there's another thing that I want to tie in here, and this is okay. I know the goal that I have, I want to go travel to Ireland. So I'm going to go out there, and I'm going to get a picture of Ireland, and it's going to be something that's meaningful to me. You know, for some people, it could be, you know, you're, you know, you're looking at a picture of Dublin, or you have the flag, the Irish flag, and that's just ah, that represents and that means so much. So as long as it's heartfelt and it means something to you, get that picture and save it, you know, I'm gonna say like, download it to your computer. You can put it on a Word document. You could save it in a separate file. But I want you to collect a picture for each and every one of your goals, and then you're going to put it on a dream board, so on a poster board, and you can print, you know, these pictures out all on one word document. Or you can just send them to your local CBS, have them printed it, print it out, and then just put it on your poster board, and then put that board somewhere where you can see it in the way it works is because the things that we see are are the things that we focus on. So having these pictures of what your goals and your dreams are in front of you will be things that you're going to be focusing on subconsciously. So you're going to be making steps towards them. And not only will you be focusing on them subconsciously, it would actually give you something good conversations to have within your own family. So like, if you have it somewhere, like in your family room, or somewhere where everybody could see, as you're with your family, you could say, you know, I'm thinking about, I donating this money to Habitat for Humanity. I'm wondering if there's any, you know, places around here, maybe we can volunteer there for a weekend. It just totally changes the conversation. And you know, that positive conversation, the thing that's kind of unifying the family, and again, it's going to release more dopamine for people, you're going to feel better and being able to do this. Now I also want to say is the power of the dream board. And when I got married, my wife and I, we did a dream board together. And I'm very, very powerful. Pretty much everything on that dream board has come true. And, you know, but two of the things that I'll say that I think were really, really powerful is one we, you know, we had a picture of, like, husband and wife and a son and a daughter. And, you know, today, that's our family like that. You know, we're blessed and fortunate enough to have a son and a daughter, and that's what we were looking for. That's like, we were like, Man, this is our hopes. And, you know, and I look at it, I'm one of seven children, and I'm the only, I'm the only person in my family who has a boy and a girl in their family. So you know that that was on my dream board, and that happened. And another one was we put pictures of places we wanted to go, and one of them was Hawaii. And when we found out that we were pregnant with our first child. We said, you know. And this happened, you know, within, you know, less than nine months of us being married, and we said, Wow. Well, we're gonna have one last chance to go on a vacation. You know, we have no idea what this is going to be like having a child, so let's go on like that baby moon. And my wife, she looked at her work, and they said you can only have this week off in the spring. So I took off that week, and we began to research places that we could go to. We're looking at like Alaska, California, Hawaii. And as we did research for that week, we looked at the plane flights, and the plane flights, it was cheaper to fly to Hawaii than it was to Alaska or even California, which we had to fly through in order to get to Hawaii. And man, we we went to Hawaii. It was a beautiful it was an amazing experience, but that picture was sitting on our dream board. So the power of setting the goals and not having to know the the how I'm going to figure it out is amazing. So you know, please, I hope that serves as an inspiration. Just to put down the things that you want to do, we don't have to worry about the how,

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but I also, you know,

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you know, I'm a logical and a heavy guy, and you know, I also know that there's some other things that we can look at, and we can measure our goals as we go about our months and our weeks and our year. Sure, and my encouragement, really is, is, you know, at least once a month taking a look back at some of these goals and saying, hey, where am I in this? Because in achieving our goals, like another part of neuroscience is, I mean, we can, you know, I could go deeper into this at another time, but, you know, you could be setting up SMART goals and gamifying everything that you've listed. But you know, at least once a month, you know, take a review of your goals and and say, okay, hey, have I made a step towards it like, Hey, have I had a conversation with Larry about doing a project at work. Yes, perfect, great. And at that moment, you're creating, like, this positive feedback loop, because you're taking stock on what you've been doing, and you're saying, Man, that's great. And take a moment to celebrate that progress. And again, that's like more neuroscience, releasing more dopamine. We're getting excited about what we're doing, we're creating good feelings within ourselves. And all of this is so important, because within life, right? We could get bombarded with things that are stressful and things that are difficult, but when we can kind of change our mindset and focus on the things that we want, because, in reality, right? Like, when we think about this idea of like prayer, like our thoughts are prayers, and you know, the Bible, you know, talks about that from everything, from like, you know, our heart's desire to, you know, as we think so we are, and so we're creating these environments around us all the time, and especially when we have a loved one in our life who's in addiction, we become consumed by those thoughts, and we don't realize that we're actually creating these type of prayers and creating more further chaos within our life. So now, if we have the opportunity to step back, look at the things that we want, some of the goals that we want in our lives, we also have the opportunity to create those environments, but we also have a way of really defining a lot of what our own morals and our values are, and it helps us to live by those. And as we live by those, all those folks around us get affected by us living by those. So if you would love to explore this further, please reach out and contact me. You know, I'm excited to hear about some of the goals people are going to be setting over the next year, please, you know, keep me updated on them, because I'm really excited about the changes that you're going to be able to influence in this world. And until our next episode, please remember that sobriety is a family affair.