How To Set, Define, and Align Your Goals to end 2022 Strong

Get ready, because everything is about to change. There's a new way of living life and doing business that will blow your mind. This is a podcast all about the timing of life and the timing of success. It's what we call the Right on Time Life. And you are listening to the Right on Time podcast with Amber McHugh. Hey there. Welcome to the Right on Time podcast. I am so thrilled to be sitting here with you today. I have news, I have updates. There is a lot going on in my life and I want to fill you in on that. And then more importantly, I want to shift to share some thoughts and ideas for you. If you are working toward a goal right now, this is going to be an incredible episode for you. But first, let me share with you what's shaken on my end because it definitely relates to you reaching your goals now. First up, the update that I have is that I my move is complete. I am currently sitting in Cote d', Ivoire, the Ivory Coast. If you are catching the video version of this podcast recording, you would see that I am sitting in a pretty empty room, the furniture that we have right now, and basically, really all that we have is the household goods that were. That came with the space that we are currently living in and the 16 suitcases that we traveled here. And that is enough to get us started. So we're doing great here. We have been here just over a week, almost two weeks. It'll be two weeks Friday actually, and it's been good. With every move that we go through, usually I don't lose anything. This time I lost something. I have a new mic. I hope it's working okay. I lost my microphone somewhere along the way. I packed it in those 16 suitcases. I kept it out of the shipment because I was recording some things you may have noticed in the last episode of the Right on Time podcast, I did not have the right mic. My mic was not working and there was quite the echo. We had also sorts of sounds. But I did pack that mic and I have no idea where it went. That is something that I lost recently. So I'm rocking a new mic today, hopefully. This sound is incredible. I really liked my last mic. So we'll. We'll see how this one goes. You let me know. And then we had the 16 suitcases that we traveled with and brought here. And usually I don't lose anything. But what I typically uncover, what typically happens with our moves, is that I realize, like, oh, there are things I want to do before we move, while we move, after we move. For example, before we move. Ooh, you know, I don't know what the hair situation's gonna be like there. I wanna get my hair done. I wanna buy some things to pack in our shipment because I don't know if we're going to have access to these key things that I really enjoy in my life. And there isn't a, there's shampoo because we can't ship liquids. But actually that worked out because I found incredible shampoos here already. And we don't know what access is going to be like. We don't know what we're going to have. The other thing that I am really particular about, and this sounds awful, you might laugh at me and make fun of me, especially if you are a coffee fan when you hear this. But I'm picky about my coffee and my husband actually commended me a couple weeks back and said, oh, I appreciate it. I'm glad you can recognize a bad cup of coffee. Because I am a new coffee drinker. I've only been drinking coffee for about four and a half years now. I started when we first moved to Ethiopia. Because it was Ethiopia. I had to try the coffee. Of course, coffee is incredible there. Yes, it was incredible. So my coffee drinking journey began in Ethiopia and made me kind of picky. My husband even recognized that. But when I am making coffee at home, I like to put coffee mate sugar free creamer in it. It is the most processed anything I have in my diet and I have a lot of it. In fact, this summer my mother in law got me a giant coffee mate. I like the powdered because I can travel with it. Giant coffee mate, 256 servings. And she got it and thought, there is no way Amber's going to go through this. But it's fine, it's fine, we'll have it, she'll use it, somebody will use it later. I went through all of it and she was surprised at the end and that's when she told me this story of I thought there was no way you were going to get through that. So there are a few key things I like to bring with us. So we're preparing for the movement, we're thinking about those things that we want. I want to go to the dentist, I want to get my self care on. I got to go to a final few doctor's appointments before we're out of the country for a good long while. And so because you just don't know, are those things here? Maybe, but I have no idea. And it's Going to take me a few a little bit to find it. You know, you establish your doctors, you establish your hair professionals, you get established with whatever, you name it, right? These things, the routines that we have in our life that create ease for us and allow us to focus on the hard things, the challenges, the goals that we're working towards. So that's part of it. And then all summer, I'm trying to do some things, I'm brainstorming. I went into high productivity mode. And typically in that space between, because there's space between, we move out of our house, but we don't actually move, move for however long it takes. When we moved to Ethiopia, it was like eight months from the time our stuff was packed and we got started living out of suitcases. But this summer, it was only like, let's say I think it was eight weeks. Eight weeks since they packed up our stuff. And then we moved to Cote d'. Ivoire. So I had that space between where my productivity was through the roof. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I see where I want to be going. Let me start taking steps towards that now. And then we arrive, I'm like, okay, I've got this new opportunity. I've got this clean slate, this fresh start. And if you've got the Fresh Start workbook, you know, I love a fresh start. If you've been listening to this episode for a while. So I've got a fresh start, and I get really excited about that fresh start. And I get my new routines going right away. I rest first. So not right away. I guess I get over jet lag first. Then I step into those new routines. And every time we do this move, I realize, and we've done a few, quite a few moves in the last seven years. I realized I'm like giving myself a little life makeover. But you don't have to wait until the move to design the life that you want. I procrastinated that dentist appointment, but boy, do I love clean teeth. I love it when my teeth feel silky smooth. And I love. Right, having regular hair appointments, whatever that looks like, whatever regular means. I put a lot of space in between my hair appointments. Let's be honest, you could probably see a little bit of that root coming up now. So you don't have to wait until that moment in your life. Where there is a trigger, there's a catalyst, right? Let this moment now be your catalyst to identify what your focus for your life is. And as I'm sitting here this morning, I was actually reflecting, thinking okay, I'm making, like, I've got a good routine going on right now, and I can step into whatever I want next. What adjustments do I want to make now? And they may be big things and they may be small things, but here's the deal. Whatever they are, we've got to identify what those desires, goals, wants, wishes are and put our attention on them. Because where our attention goes, what we're thinking about, what we're focused on is where our energy will flow. And it may not happen right away. Right? Like, I knew I needed to get back into some sort of movement routine. I needed to be moving my body more, not faster, not intense. There's no intense movement over here, but just moving more, a little bit more, stretching my nice, slow run. It's very slow. It's actually called slow running is the practice I follow. And so I percolated on those things for six to eight weeks this summer. Like, all right, building up. I'm like, there's some changes I want to make. Then I had this space between where I'm like, okay, I cannot fully embrace all these changes right now because we are living out of 16 suitcases, and we are hopping around this summer, seeing family, going on a couple adventures before we moved, paperwork. We had a lot to do. We had a lot shaking. So I knew I was in a season of life where I couldn't step into some of these things that I wanted to. But as soon as we landed, I did, My attention was focused on that. And for a period of time, I was percolating. I was thinking about it, I was deciding I was using these things as a framework for what I'm going to say yes and no to. For example, in Ethiopia, I was part of the parent teacher organization. The last year we were there, and I realized I got a little bit busy. And I've decided the last few years, I'm like, okay, I'm not getting as involved, right? Because there are these other things I need to focus on right now. So when you define what you are going to focus on, you get this framework for what to say yes to and what to say no to. Is this aligned with my goal or my goals for life? And if not, that becomes something that you may say no to because you want to operate in alignment with where you want to be going. Those desires, those goals, those wishes, those wants. You get to define it, and then we align everything around that. And sure, shiny things are going to pop up, right? They're going to pop up, but we're going to use this as a framework to say, oh, no, not that shiny thing. Nope, not today, maybe another day. Let me put that in the million dollar parking lot. So something else that comes up is I did not tell a lot of people, I do not tell a lot of people necessarily what my goals are. Yes, there are some, I declare and like, this is it, this is what we're working towards. But if it is something new, if it is something that I want to establish traction on sooner rather than later, or that I'm still percolating and I don't have it all mapped out yet and we're not ready to action on, zip, don't tell anyone about this goal. This is a little bit counter to declare your goal, claim your goal. For a long time. This was the research and the advice, right? And I know when you get accountable to your action steps, you're more likely to achieve them when you get accountable. And, and for some of us, that's internal accountability works better. Some of it, it's external. For me, it depends on the goal. Sometimes I'll ask my husband to say I was going through a writing season where I just wanted to write, simply write every day. And I asked him to be an external check for me. Can you just ask me if you see me doing something, if you see me thinking, are you writing right now? Why are you writing? Did you write today just to prompt me and start to integrate that into my flow, my thinking patterns, my way of operating. But then there are other times I'm like, you know, I just got to percolate on this. I just got to make it happen. Then I'm going to pull in that external accountability. And new research shows that when you talk about your goals, talking, talking, telling people, sharing people, okay, why are we talking about our goals and not actually doing the work? And I learned recently while reading the Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler, that research now shows that when you are talking about your goals, dopamine is releasing this reward, this hit and surge of dopamine is released, and you're already receiving the feeling of achieving those goals and you don't have the motivation internally to stay in the game to work towards them. Isn't that fascinating? That fascinated me when I, when I heard the research that was tied to this and what was actually happening there. There's a similar concept that happens when you do scenario planning. So we can use this to our advantage. On the flip side, for example, when you scenario plan, which is something we do as part of our modern CEO curriculum and something I invite you to do as you're thinking through. Okay, I've got this big goal and for a minute might be like, but what if it doesn't work? Fear might pop up, concerns might pop up. All these things that could go wrong might pop up. Yes. Let's run through them for a minute. I'd say up to 15 minutes. Don't dwell on this, but if these things are coming into your mind, let's address them and then let's move them out of the way through some scenario planning. This is very strategic. This is a thing that businesses and organizations do often because we make plans, but things don't always go as planned. Am I right? Am I right? I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. We know. And so you make these plans and then you do a couple scenarios. Let that. Okay, all right. What if. What if I launch that new product, that new program? What if I launch the program for the 10th time and it doesn't go as planned this time? Okay, cool. What if 30 people instead of the 100 goal sign up? What am I going to do? Okay, cool. What am I going to do? How am I going to process that? Right. What if one of the things that I played through because one of my biggest fears when I was starting my business is what if I go bankrupt? I'm going to play that out. Okay, what if. All right, cool. I got a plan for that now. It's a scenario plan. I didn't spend long in it. I literally, I'm embarrassed, but I'm going to tell you anyway. I literally spent as much time as it takes to go to the bathroom in a stall in my corporate job. So it wasn't like a long bathroom run. But I quickly like, all right, what am I going to do? Okay, cool. Okay, done. That's taken care of. And what happens is that when you do scenario planning and you look at like, worst case scenario, any case scenario that I can play out, that's not ideal. What can I do instead? You've already put yourself in that situation. So if it ever did happen, number one, you got a plan, you could step right back into action around it. And number two, you felt the feeling, you've experienced the emotion. And if and when this does happen, it doesn't hit as hard because you've been there, done that. And the same thing happens when we tell people about our goals with this release of dopamine. And it doesn't work to our advantage in this situation because we're already feeling the feeling. We're like, oh, it's like, I've been there, done that. I have this problem as well. When I look at other people having success on the Internet, I'm like, I like feel, feel good for them. I feel amazing. Seeing my friends, my colleagues, my clients kick butt like, you are awesome. And I feel good. I'm like, oh, well, I feel good. I still need to get in action on some of the goals I have. Right? So we've got to be careful with what our body naturally does and how it operates and align that with, with some of our goal setting models. So think about those people that you know who are just crushing. You're like, where did they come from? It's like they popped up overnight. They've been working on those goals, they've been percolating, they've been processing, like, okay, now we are ready to go. We are ready to go. So maybe don't tell everyone about those goals. The other thing that I was thinking through and my family was working through in this last season is related to something called 75 hard. Have you heard of this? I'm gonna, I gotta fill you in just in case you haven't heard of this yet. So 75 hard is like a fitness, wellness, whole body, get, you know, in shape, challenge. And for 75 days, you've got to do a series of hard things every day. And if you don't do them every day, you have to start over. So the things on this list are workout twice a day for 45 minutes. One of those workouts has to be outside. That does not at all sound appealing. In winter for me, in Chicago, this is when my husband first tried to do 75 hard. He was working out one stay outside once day inside in the middle of winter, drink a gallon of water a day, read 10 pages of a nonfiction book every day, no alcohol, and have some sort of a meal plan, right? So have some healthy eating, something, whatever your healthy way of eating is for you, incorporate that. So you've got to do these things. I feel like I'm missing something. When you look this up on the Internet, you're going to like seed the whole list. So if you decide to look it up. So you have to do these things for 75 days. If you mess up, if you miss anything, you have to start all the way over. Your clock restarts in 75 days. So my husband was doing this with a friend and the friend one day, oh, had a, had a drink, had a glass of bourbon or something and had to restart his clock. Ah, he was like 30 days in at that point, like, oh, oh. And then My husband got 45 days in and fell asleep before he finished his 10 pages. Oh, I felt so bad for him. So he had to restart. He did not restart it right away. He waited just over a year and was restarting it again this spring, this past spring. And then my Sister Maura found 75 soft. And she said, Ooh, why don't we try 75 soft? Because I was not doing 75 hard. So 75 soft is like a dialed down version of this, I think. I don't know if it's like workout twice a day, but for 20 minutes and yes, drink your water and yes, read. But you only have to do certain things, like few days of the week and you get a day off each week. I don't know, look it up if you're interested. But here's the deal. Here's what I want to call attention to here. It's a long list of things you have to do, right? I got to do all of these things every day. It's focused. I like a challenge. So that piece of it's really appealing to me, but it is loading your system up with all sorts of things that you have to do every day to get fit, to get well. And I was thinking about this. I'm like, you know, I do not think that this is the right way to achieve our long term goals for a short burst of like, get me on track, a challenge, a little incentive maybe. But I am going long term. And I personally have to be careful not to trigger migraines. I'm like two times a day, once outside in the winter. I can't do that in the winter. So I had to rethink this for myself. And I watched as my husband second time around on 75 hard. Nope, didn't make it. And guess how many of us made it through 75 soft? Not one of us. I'm gonna have to check in with a friend because she was just doing another round. She's like, I'm gonna do it. She got an accountability group together that was external to her. Not family, not friends and family. She's in our family group and I'm gonna check in with her and see how she's doing. I'm like, I wonder, I wonder how many people finished now. Same thing goes for right. You've got to be committed. There takes commitment to achieve and do hard things. You've got to want it. You've got to be intentional. You've got to be focused. Obviously, my focus is not on something like that, I have a different flow, a different way of operating. But I was thinking about how we stack things up, right? Like 75 hard, like 75 offered, like, do all of these things, just like we do in our life and with our goals. But where I have seen people have more success, have the most successful of the most successful aren't trying to do all of the things. They're focused on those few key things that align with where you want to be going, what are your desires, your goals, your wants, your wishes, and what really bubbles to the top of that list. I recently learned of an approach Warren Buffett actually took, and this is called the 5:25. The 5:25 approach to reaching your goals. And the story came about when Warren Buffett was apparently talking to his pilot about his goals and where he wanted to be going. And the pilot had. The pilot, Mike had a whole list of things that he wrote down. In fact, Warren Buffett apparently asked Mike to write down 25 professional priorities. And then as soon as that was finished, write down those 25 things that you want, that you were going after that are important to you, that matter, that are goals you want to accomplish, demand. As we think about goals I have for my life, the possibilities, it's long, right? And I bet it is for you too. If you're an idea generator, if you're an entrepreneur, if as humans, right, we have set one goal and it expands and we travel or we hear things from other people and just kind of keeps growing. But, you know, try for 25. And then Warren Buffett told him to circle the five most important items, the top five. And then with everything else, you're going to ignore it. You're going to ignore it. Whoa. Why? Why? Because how can you focus on 25 things at once? If you are focused on 25 things at once, it's not going to work. In fact, Warren Buffett is quoted as saying, no, you got it wrong, Mike. Everything you didn't just circle as your top five actually becomes your avoid at all cost list. Don't put an A, B, C for all of your life goals. What am I going to do? First, second, third. Those seconds, and those thirds are a distraction from those things that are your priorities that you just defined if you walked through this exercise, right? So Warren Buffett recommended give zero attention to the B list, totally no attention to the C list. And you put your intention, your energy, your time on those top five, not the 25. And then Warren Buffett recommended that when you've done those five Then you can repeat the process, add new goals, pull up goals from the B list. Maybe things have changed by then and it looks completely different anyway. But man, what a cool approach to like, okay, not everything. These are all of the possibilities. Yes, okay, I go through that in journaling, exercises and brainstorming, etc. But then you got to scale it back and identify, know what's really my focus and what's most important to me right now for the life I envision. Where I want to be going, who I want to be, how I want to be showing up, how do you want to be showing up? Where do you want to be going? Who do you want to be in this life? What kind of a life do you want for yourself? How do you want to work? How do you want to connect with people? These are the things that are going to help determine your top five. You might even get more focused in and just focus on a top three. But what's important here is we get some focus. There is no need for us to focus on all of the things because as I say, how many cars can you drive at once? It is not a trick question. We can't focus on driving 25 cars at once or we are going to be getting nowhere and getting nowhere fast. So these are some of the thoughts related to goal setting and this life makeover I sort of moved through in preparation for our move to Cote d' Ivoire and I wanted to share that with you because I every July reset my goals and then I prepare for the Plan A thon which is coming up and you are invited to this all free incredible event where you can register an RSVP@theplanathon.com but I start getting in planning mode more broadly because we're preparing for the Plan A thon then I reset my goals and percolate a little bit more. So right at the quarter mark, what a beautiful time. And then in December I revisit my goals again and in July I'm thinking about 2023. I'm planning ahead because 2022 we are executing right now. So okay, what's next? Where are we going? How do we want to scale? How do we want to shift? What do we need to shift? Right, so I do that in July, I do that in October, I do that in December and you are invited to do that with us. I mentioned theplanathon.com a little bit more detail on this. This is a one week planning event for your business to help you identify what am I focused on, how Do I want to focus? Where do I want to focus to? Also learn some new strategies for sales, for financial management, for your money, for your mindset, for your marketing from the incredible speakers that we have coming. And oh by the way, this is our 10th annual plan a thon. I can hardly believe it. 10 years. And we've got an incredible anniversary bonus bundle for you where we have loaded you up with strategies, workbooks, techniques, meditation, an audiobook of how to get addicted to launching, how to create an engaged brand, how to have joy in selling, the right on time, meditation, the case study, and how to start and build a business from nothing and so much more. That's just a sampling because we have 10 anniversary gifts. Some are available to you immediately, others are being unlocked as we go. And these are only available now before the Plan A Thon kicks off. Once the planet starts, these are going, going, gone. So you're going to want to RSVP now so you can get your hands on that incredible bundle. As we navigate and move through this goal setting, evaluation, goal finishing for 2022 season, I want to invite you to get your focus on your attention defines where your energy and your time goes. So identify what are my desires, goals, wants, wishes and where am I really going to focus? Maybe if you've got some goals you are percolating on, it's okay not to talk about all of them. It's okay not to announce it all on social. It's okay to keep some things for yourself in a small, small, small group of people while you are nurturing the goal, the idea, the vision, and while you're getting ready to step into action on it. Or maybe you're stepping into action silently and you're going to blow all of our minds. Try not to stack yourself up with too much. You don't have to go all 75 hard on your goals. Bring it down from 75 to 25 to just 5 or maybe even 3 areas of focus for yourself. And remember, it's okay to give yourself a fresh start if it's not working. If you start off on a 75 hard path, you can change it up. If it's not working for you. You are not a flake if you change it up. We are learning every step of the way what works for us and what doesn't. And we're getting further and further in alignment every single day. You're working it right on time at your own pace. You are always right on time. Thank you for being here with me today. It has been great hanging out in our first Right On Time episode. Coming at you from Cote d'. Ivoire. I can't wait to hear from you. If you are down for it, like subscribe, download, share it with your friends, tag me in over on Instagram. I'm Amber McKee. If you got a nugget out of this, or if you're at a point where you do want to announce a goal, I want to hear about it. When the time is right. All the love. Have a good one. I'll catch you in the next Right On Time episode.