Episode 171: Do You Need to Set More Goals?

11 Oct

What if this was the year that you didn't set a thousand new goals to reach in order to feel good about yourself? Instead, you can just keep existing and keep track of what you love about life. How does this thought sit with you? Well, in today's episode, I want to explore this with you. I want to have a conversation around our pressure to always be doing more, to always be setting goals, how sometimes self help can be dangerous and not in our best interest, and how we can reevaluate what it means to exist, to be mindful and to be productive.

Transcript:

Let's go ahead and get into today's episode.

Welcome to the Mindful Productivity Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Steckler, and this is the place to be to live a more mindful and productive life. If you're ready to turn daily chaos into calm and start your days with intention, then get ready to join me as we dive deep into mindful living and personal productivity. It's time to connect with your true self so you can live the life you want to live. And it all starts now.

I'm recording this at the beginning of quarter four, so it's the last quarter of the current year, and I'm doing some thinking and some evaluating. What are the things that I want to accomplish during this last quarter? What are the things that I thought to accomplish this year, right? And going into the new year? What do I want that to look like? But this year I'm also taking a deep pause, and I'm asking myself to look a little bit deeper beyond the pressure to do more and to set more goals and to make more money.

And I'm taking a moment to say, well, where is all of this really coming from? And is it coming from myself and do the goals that I think I need to set actually need to be set? One thing I want to touch on before we jump into evaluating and having a conversation around all these things is, do you feel a lot of pressure right now in your life to make the most of the last quarter of the year, when the final months of the year start to sink in and we enter into fall in winter?

Do you feel a pressure like your year wasn't good enough unless you do more like you were a failure, unless you suddenly accomplish something or suddenly triple your income in the next three months? Do you feel that pressure? I know a lot of us do, and it can be really common to feel that way. There's a hard line that gets a little blurry between the wonderful, inspiring drive to do more and reach our potential versus the pressure to do more because that's how we define success and that if we're not always building momentum and always doing more, then what's the point?

I think there's a big point into even doing absolutely nothing and I want to talk to you about all of that today. I want to start with this quote from Steve Jobs. He said, "if you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse. But over time it does calm. And when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things. That's when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before.”

This quote got me thinking, and it really made me evaluate how sometimes the desire and the pressure to continually set more goals can take us away from the present moment and what we've already accomplished. Make no mistake. This episode is not an anti Goal setting episode, nor is this podcast about not doing things or not being productive. More so it's a critical analysis evaluation of how we both think about all these things and then also the external and societal pressures that we feel and how we can kind of come to our own conclusion and mid ground in this, how can you find your own ease and peace within what you set out to do, what you do, and then how you actually are, how you exist in the given moments of your life.

So maybe the goal isn't the sustainability of any one thing. Perhaps the goal is to simply exist, allowing life to ebb and flow and to take pause within the moments that we truly enjoy. Most of my life has felt like this. Build an interest in something, learn how to do that thing, practice being with that thing and embodying that thing, do the thing, integrate the thing into a regular practice, and then start over. But add a new thing. The more goals I have, the more goals you have, the more complex life becomes.

Wanting more turns into doing more, which turns into a state of feeling pressure to be more. So today's episode is all about that Where's the line between existing and creating, between improving and observing, between accomplishing and learning, between stillness and momentum. Now only you can enter this for yourself, and the drive to do more may not last for a lifetime. That's why it's so important to look at the cycles of things. It may last a year. So getting excited about a project, a new endeavor, goal, it may evolve into something new.

And for me, as I'm looking at quarter four in the new year, I'm releasing the pressure that we must become a stacked success block of ourselves and our capabilities. When did reach your potential become never be still within the joy of your life. This is the part of the podcast where we talk about a couple of phrases. We're going to talk about potential, your higher self and self development personal development in general. I think some of these things can become dangerous in certain ways, just like anything.

But I actually want to start with potential and actually looking. I love definitions, but looking at the definition of potential because a lot of times when we think about potential, I think we think of this endless exponential thing, but potential actually defined in a different way. It's defined as both an adjective, so describing word right and a noun. So a personal player thing and the adjective description of it is having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future. I want to read that to you again, having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future.

So Newsflash, whether you seek out your potential or not, you will in fact become or develop into something in the future. There isn't anything about becoming better, becoming bigger, becoming more efficient. It's simply the capacity to become or develop into something in the future, which really just happens by living and existing. Now there's another definition of it. The noun definition also talks about the qualities or abilities that may be developed and lead to future success or usefulness. Right. So as an example, the example here is a young broadcaster with great potential.

So potential is also the ideal of developing or leading to something usefulness or success. But who's to say that merely existing and building upon what we love and what we enjoy on a daily basis isn't merely enough, isn't useful or isn't successful. I really been stepping away from using the term higher self. It's a phrase I've used a lot in my business when I did a lot of coaching. It's a catch phrase. I think we hear a lot in the entrepreneur space in the personal development space, but it's kind of left a bad taste in my mouth, and I'm not no shade to anyone who wants to continue using it, but I'm kind of over it.

I'm kind of over this. You know, what's the best version of yourself? What's the highest version of yourself? Again, not saying we can't improve, but it kind of takes us away and it can take us away from our present selves. I really more prefer what's the favorite version of yourself or something like that? Because I think we all have moments where we're not our best selves or we've not made the best decisions. But the term higher self makes us feel like we're always striving to be this thing that's almost unreachable, as if we can only become our higher selves.

If we have this seven step morning routine and we work out every day and we're completely consistent with posting on social media and this that and the other. It reminds me again of the never ending goal setting pressure that I have often experienced my whole life. What if, instead of looking at life as a focus on our higher selves, to always be doing more personal development. We actually took a look at what's the end goal with all of this is the goal to somehow end up at this perfect place of being some kind of higher level human?

And is that sustainable? Are the people that push these kind of things that have a lot more access to money and to time because of help that they have because of help, they're able to hire any of that stuff are all those things that all these people push? Are those really helpful to us on a regular basis? Are those things actually serving us? Is the desire to always be doing more and being more and tapping into our full potential as you will is that really serving us?

So coming back to this thought in this podcast episode today, the main thing I'm asking you is what's the point of your goal setting? And I'm not talking about never doing goal setting in your business. Obviously, if you want to reach a goal or you want something to happen, planning it out and mapping it out is a great way to do that, right? I do that in my business. I'm not going to stop goal setting. But if you think about your personal life and what you want the next year or the last quarter to feel like maybe consider that you might not actually need a new goal.

You might just actually need the space, permission and allowance to allow yourself to exist and do more things that bring you joy. Maybe instead of setting more lofty goals to do more or to push yourself to the limits, maybe the goal itself needs to be to exist, to drink enough water every day, to come back to getting enough sleep, to come back to the basics of taking care of yourself and cultivating joy on a regular basis? Think about that. What would your life be like if you're someone that's always set big goals every year?

And maybe you haven't always been able to reach one of them or any of them? Maybe it's not because you're a failure. In fact, it's not. Maybe it has more so to do with the fact that goal setting can sometimes be a way of avoiding the very things that we need. It's really sexy to reach for a big, lofty goal without actually having to take a step inward and say, what are the simple, non sexy things that I actually need to do to feel good, to feel like I have enough energy to get through the day to manage and take care of my mental health.

What are those things? Those things aren't usually the biggest funnest goals, right? Those things don't take a lot of time or energy to even write down in a planner or put into a project management system. They just require taking simple actions every day and sometimes doing things that we don't want to do, and they don't have novelty to them drinking enough water or making sure you're drinking one or two of your water bottles every day. It's not something that the brain gets excited about because it's not flashy.

It's not new. It's not a new strategy or a new system, and it doesn't require you to go out and buy more things at target. It just means that you have to take action with what you already have, with what's in front of you. It means that you need to start from where you are, which as simple and lovely as that is, is always exciting. So when we think about all of this, it's really important to know what is driving us, what's driving your goals. And if anything, I hope that this episode reminds you that there's so much joy and mindfulness itself is a very useful skill, and it simply means to be present and aware of your current life day to day and to stop putting so much pressure on thinking about things in the past in the future.

A lovely quote from Plato that I come back to is "in order to seek one's own direction, one must simplify the mechanics of ordinary everyday life." Think about the things that truly matter to you. And maybe instead of feeling tons of pressure to go set another goal or go do something big before the year ends, maybe instead come back to making lists about things that you love, making time to do things you love for me. Instead of trying to set another big goal for the last quarter, I'm instead going to make time every day to do more of those things journaling, getting out my planners and journals using the washi tape and stickers that I've collected over the years, making more time to be out in nature and go on longer walks while the weather is beautiful and super cool and crisp outside, all of these things really, really matter.

And I hope this episode gave you pause to just think about why we set goals and what's the real, real reason behind it. And also when does the you drive or the desire to continue personal development actually take us away from the moment we're in and take us away from the person that we are. It's totally okay to have a year to have a month, a week, a quarter, a season or longer in your life where you're not constantly trying to develop yourself. You're instead enjoying being a human being.

You're taking care of the things that you have the time and energy for. There's gonna be so many seasons in your life. Some you may have more drive and energy and passion and purpose to do bigger things, more challenging things, and then other times you may not or you may not want to. It's okay. And that's okay. You are a human being and you are allowed to simply exist. I hope you found this episode helpful and come and let me know what your big takeaways were.

I'd love to hear from you on Instagram. I'm over @MindfulProductivityBlog and just remember this the definition of potential is having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future. And I that if you continue to exist and when you wake up tomorrow, you will have already done just that. See you back here next Monday for a brand new episode. Have a great week ahead.