Goal Setting and Unexpected Wins

Ever wondered how goals evolve once they're set? Join me, Sherisse Alexander, as I reflect on my journey of goal setting for 2024, sparked by an inspiring conversation with Helen Nguyen from Embrace Your Power Coaching. With six out of ten goals accomplished, I share my insights on the ongoing adventure of tackling the remaining four. Challenges, as I've come to see, are not roadblocks but stepping stones for growth. Listen as I recount unexpected victories and surprise accomplishments that have added joy and depth to my year, underscoring the magic of staying open to unplanned successes.

Creating this podcast has been a dream in the making, and I'll take you through the whirlwind of turning that dream into reality. Despite my initial uncertainty, a decisive launch date transformed my vague ideas into actionable steps. From navigating podcast directories to the midnight frustration of mastering WordPress, my journey is a testament to focusing on core goals amidst the noise of ancillary tasks. Let my story be a reminder that clarity and focus can turn aspirations into tangible achievements, with the podcast now serving as a living example of setting priorities straight.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:13

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you might be when you're listening to this. My name is Charisse Alexander, your host of your Collective. Today's episode is going to be a solo cast, just as a follow up to last week's episode where I was joined by Helen Nguyen of Embrace your Power Coaching. And what we were talking about last week was goal setting, and that episode prompted me to actually take a look back through my journal, which is my record, to see, you know, how did I actually do this year for 2024. So when I looked back and I did the assessment, I could see that, you know, I set 10 goals and out of the 10, I was pleased to say that I achieved six. Now that doesn't mean that I didn't achieve the other four. It means the other four are still a work in progress. So I don't feel like I can check it off my list. But, surprisingly, in my review I was also writing down some of the things that happened that were pleasant surprises, and I was happy to see that there were three things, three big things actually that ended up on that list, that were kind of goals and I actually did think about, but I didn't write them down, which was really interesting to me. So I would say that, overall 2024, while it was wrought with challenges and I've even learned how to shift my perspective on challenges Now I now look at challenges as opportunities for me to practice what I've learned, opportunities for me to show up as the best version of myself. So, even though there were lots of challenges, there were also lots of rewards and opportunities within that journey. So I'm extremely grateful for the experience so far of 2024. There's still time left in the year, so it's still very possible that I can check a few things off of that list of goals that I had for myself.

Speaker 1: 2:31

So, key takeaways from last week's episode with Helen. Key takeaway number one was you know you set your goal, your goal, and how do we balance the time constraint on it? And Ellen talked about focusing on the process. What are the things that you need to do to get yourself to that goal? So I'm going to use the podcast as an example here.

Speaker 1: 3:02

So, for those of you who know me well, I'd actually been talking about doing a podcast for like two years. I just wasn't sure what form it was going to take and then, at the end of 2023, I was like, okay, I'm going to do this and even open to 2024, kind of like. Not sure how I wanted to do it, but it quickly started to take form and for me so this is kind of the importance for me anyways around putting a date around something. So I put a date on my list and it was like April 1, that was when I was going to launch this thing. So then I filled in all of the in between. So there were the logistics I needed to get headphones, I needed to get a mic, I needed to figure out where I was going to host the podcast, I needed to figure out how to submit to podcast directories, I needed to figure out, you know, who I wanted to talk to. So those are the details, the process, the things that I needed to work my way towards in order to actually be able to launch for April 1st.

Speaker 1: 4:14

And, as I said on last week's or the episode with Helen, I can get really lost in the details. Uh, I don't know about you guys, but I did find there was some of that going on, because it wasn't then it didn't just become about the podcast and I was like, oh my gosh, I got to have a website and then I definitely knew I wanted to have a blog. Um, and then I was like, oh, I need, I need more content, I need photos, I need videos and and. And here I am like a late night it was like maybe midnight and I'm trying to teach myself WordPress so I can launch a website. I was getting so frustrated and then a thought occurred to me Was the goal to launch a website or was the goal to launch a podcast? And so that's what allowed me to stop, rewind and focus on what the actual goal was, which was launching the podcast and getting back to the process. So and not to say that those other things are not coming but I realized in that moment that the website doesn't need to precede the podcast. So I'm just using it as an example so that you can see what I mean when I talk about focusing on the process.

Speaker 1: 5:29

The second key takeaway from the episode with Helen was being flexible, and flexible in my mind means, yes, having a goal in mind, right, and and there's always balance in these things right, like, if it's something that you really, really, really want to achieve, you got to keep it in your mind. You got to keep it like in your mind. Visually. You got to keep it written down, you got to be working on it actively, all of these things but at the same time we got to be flexible with what that looks like, especially around time and how it happens, you know, because we can get really caught up on I need to do this thing by this particular point in time. But if you're working with the divine and spirit and really and I mean really partnering with the divine in the things that we are trying to achieve in our life, you very quickly understand that there's human time and then there's divine time, and divine time doesn't work like human time. Divine time is literally when the timing is right, and so when we talk about things like that, you know we've definitely in the work environment, we've definitely set goals for ourself and said, okay, by this particular time we need to have ABC and XYZ done. But sometimes what I've learned in this journey, as it pertains to work, is that not achieving a goal in a specific time sometimes is the blessing in disguise. It doesn't feel like it in that moment, but sometimes it's because you needed to learn something, you needed to get more skills, you needed to have the right people come in and really learning how to surrender in that process of recognizing there's divine time and there's human time. There's pushing and the action of what humanity generally does, and then there's the surrender piece of knowing when to step back and let the divine do what it needs to do in order for the best and highest outcome for all involved. So that's what I mean when I say being flexible and finding the balance between push and surrender, and finding the balance between push and surrender, doing and taking a step back and letting it unfold.

Speaker 1: 7:49

The third key takeaway from the episode with Helen was review. So lots of us might ask, oh, you know, I wrote down these things that I wanted to achieve, or these New Year's resolutions, whatever you call them, and you get to the end of the year and you might be like, oh, I didn't achieve the goal. Okay, well, why Were we reviewing? And this was like, to be honest, this was the first time that I reviewed a goal so regularly in terms of the process and what I'm supposed to do, and so on and so forth, what I'm supposed to do and so on and so forth. And so, you know, I wrote down my goals in January, I reviewed them. I was reviewing them pretty well every single month up until June, which makes sense why I maybe didn't achieve as many goals on the list as I had originally intended, because up until half way. Now that doesn't mean that I wasn't working on them. I was and I have been. But when you are constantly reviewing constantly, you're like keeping yourself focused, you're bringing yourself back to center, you're you're making sure that you're you're keeping yourself accountable. So that's, in my mind, why the review is really important.

Speaker 1: 9:01

And then here was an interesting thing that I had witnessed with one of my kids so I think it was about March and he called me up and he was like kind of getting down on himself. You know, the new year can be tough for people. We get excited because we're you know it's a new year and new you and all this other kind of stuff. But I sometimes find that we can slip into a little bit of depression around February, especially in winter climates, because the days are still short, it's cold, it's dark, so on and so forth. But anyways, one of my kids calls me up and they're saying to me they're kind of down in the dumps and they're talking about how they're feeling so off track with their goals and what they should be doing. And I just said to him I'm like well, did you go and check your list? And he's like no. And I said, okay, well, pull it out. If you don't mind talking about it, let's go over it.

Speaker 1: 10:03

And what was like so beautiful in that moment is, as he's going over the list, he realizes that, oh my gosh, I've like actually achieved all of my goals, and it was like March goals, and it was like March. And so we started to have a chuckle over this and I said so maybe what you were feeling was not necessarily that you were off track, but these goals. And it was only a quarter of the way through the year and he had already achieved the goals on his list. So what did it invite? What did the experience invite him to do? Yes, make new goals. So that's exactly what he did. He made new goals for the remainder of the year and you know he's doing amazing even now with it, because then new goals come up right, and this is this all ties in together.

Speaker 1: 10:56

Focusing on the process allowed him to achieve those goals and because he was flexible and adaptable and he reviewed, he was able to go back and see okay, I've already done these. Now it's time to set new goals. So that review process is really important to again keeping ourselves accountable, making sure that we're on track, keeping the list tidy in terms of on track, keeping the list tidy in terms of is this what I still want to do? And being okay with letting go of the things that you don't want to do and not beating yourself up about it. But really there's only so much human time in a day, so it's tough to give everything 100% of your time. It's not possible. There's only so much bandwidth.

Speaker 1: 11:48

And then the last thing that was a key takeaway for me was celebrate, celebrate the milestones in that journey, and this is one that I think that a lot of people get a little stuck on, or at least what I've witnessed in my work environment is you know, we set a lot of really, really big goals and we achieve that goal and literally in the next minute, we're on to the next thing. So it would not be unusual for me, with my team, to say my team to say let's just pause and let's just enjoy the moment of all the hard work that we all put in to achieving this goal. It doesn't always mean that it has to be like a big celebration or a party or balloons and fireworks, like that's not what celebrating has to mean. Celebrating can look like whatever it is that you want, and for me, it's just as simple as acknowledging that we did it, we achieved this goal, and saying thank you, thank you to the people who contributed, thank you to myself for staying with it, thank you to the Divine for keeping me focused and helping me to bring this thing together. So, please, in the journey of achieving the goal, please do not forget to stop and celebrate.

Speaker 1: 13:09

So, as I sit down now and write my goals for 2025, which, yes, I've done I broke them out into categories so personal, money, work and spiritual and then broke that down even a little bit more into what is it specifically, in each of those areas of my life do I want to achieve? So I have begun the process of writing my goals for 2025. And I encourage you to do the same as this year comes to an end. So, in closing, if you enjoyed today's episode and the chat about goal setting and how we achieve those things and the key takeaways from the episode with Helen, please continue to listen, subscribe, download and if you have any questions or ideas for future episodes, please always feel free to reach out to me, and I can be reached on Instagram, which is at Cherise Hume, or you can send me an email at sharice at your collectiveca. That's S-H-E-R-I-S-S-E at your collectiveca, and until next time, please take care you.