Shedding the MIDYEAR Bitch - It's Not Always SMART

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Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at BlogTalkRadio.com. Shedding the Bitch, or share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back. 818-572-2910. Good day, good day, good day everyone. How are you? This is indeed Bernadette Boas. I, um, was actually concerned about making it to the studio. My AC is out again, so I've been trying to take care of that all morning and just kind of rushed in about 2 seconds before the program started. So I'm so glad that you're with me. I'm so glad Deborah of Parker House Virtual Services is out there and she's with me too. I'm sure she was panicking going, "Oh my gosh, is she coming? Is she coming? Is she coming?" I wouldn't let my Shedding the Bitch community down, so we are here and we're going to have a great conversation. Today we'll be talking about how to shed the mid-year bitch. So who cares if you didn't set your goals, you haven't met your goals maybe, or even if you don't even know how to set up goals. We're going to talk all about those things, and I'm, I'm wanting to put a different spin on it. I actually went back because I feel like we talk, uh, so SMART goals and goal setting a lot. And I think we do as it pertains to the topics that we're having, whether it's just you and I or if I have a guest, a guest expert that would join me for one of the programs. But I went back into the archives on sheddingthebitch.com, by the way, and like I thought, we do talk a lot about it as it's peppered into other discussion points, but we haven't really had a concentrated conversation in regards to it. So we're going to do a little bit about— we're going to change it up a little bit when it comes to mid-year assessments, and we're going to talk about SMART goals so you are aware of what they're about. And then I would hope that you gain some new insights if you are a regular listener of the program and you, because you can always go to Apple Podcasts, iTunes, sheddingthebitch.com, and download any one of our hundreds of episodes we've had over the last bunch of years, 5 or 6, 7 or 8, not quite sure exactly how many. But, but that's what we're going to talk about today, shedding your mid-year bitch. But before we do that, I want to just mention some of those episodes. That we've had recently. Uh, the first Tuesday of every month, as an FYI for first-time listeners, is our Ask Bernadette episode, and it's a very popular one because you get an opportunity to ask any of your business, career, or life questions that you might have. And I was asked over the last week or so, what exactly does that mean? Uh, because I can't be an expert on everything. So what that means is, especially when it comes to career and business, if you have a career question, something's going on at your current, uh, job with a current maybe team member or boss or some sort of relationship, maybe you're having an HR issue, maybe you're wondering what to do next in regards to a career move or an advancement, uh, we talked about performance reviews and how to really present your performance review both verbally and in writing. So it's the most effective that it can be. Uh, we had that conversation on last week's Ask Bernadette episode. Um, but anything that pertains to those of you who work for a business, work in a corporate or even a small business, uh, then when it pertains to business, uh, what I mean by that is if you happen to be a small, medium, large size business owner, entrepreneur, you own the business and you're wondering kind of how to navigate it, whether you're starting it, managing, or growing it. So those two areas I've spent the last 35 years living in and mastering, and also providing a great deal of advisement to small to corporate size organizations. And then life questions. Life questions are anything. It could be about a a family relationship, it could be about a love relationship, it could be about dealing with some, you know, personal challenge or issue or addiction, whatever the case might be. Anything out, you know, not— well, let's say anything outside the work arena, uh, that you might be, uh, having a question or a challenge around. Now, um, I am an expert in a lot of things. I'm pretty much considered a generalist. But at the same time, if I can't answer a question, I am not going to attempt to. I'm not going to, you know, attempt to give you my opinion when what you're looking for is expert advice and guidance. And I'll reach out to the large network of experts that I do have. And I have pretty much an expert in anything that you could hit me up with. And if you'd like to try and challenge me on that point, feel free to because we always want to hear about you. So Ask Bernadette, the first Tuesday of every month. And thank you for allowing me to give you that extra tidbit of information about it because I'm not often asked, but I was asked over the last week or so. Now, how you do that, you can post your story question or challenge on Facebook, Twitter, or Shedding the Bits pages. If you want to keep it more low-key, you can send it to me directly at BernadetteBoas@sheddingthebitch.com. If you are on LinkedIn and you happen to come up with something, you can always send me a private direct message, and LinkedIn is predominantly where I get majority of people forwarding me their questions. Alright, so that's Ask Bernadette. Then we had a conversation about faking it till you make it. People have their own opinion about whether you should fake it or not, and I share with you mine. And then we talked about mistakes, having to make mistakes, but it's a love and hate thing. And then we had a conversation that definitely resonated with a lot of you, and it was around changing your words in order to change your world. Change Your Words to Change Your World. So you can go, like I said, you can go to Apple Podcasts, download them there. You can go to sheddingthebitch.com and scroll down, you'll see our radio link and all of our episodes are there. Or you can go to blogtalkradio.com, search for Shedding the Bitch Radio, and you'll find all the episodes there. All right, so a lot of ways to stay connected to me, stay connected to Deborah and our entire Shedding the Bitch community, and we love having you out there. All right, on to some rich news, and I bring this up— you're going to be like, where is this coming from, left field? Because I had an experience this morning. So I was on the way back from my Weight Watchers weigh-in, which we'll talk about with our conversation for today, but I was on my way home and I was meeting the AC guy because, as I mentioned, I'm sitting here sweating in the studio because my house is without AC at the moment again. I won't bore you with that. But it does— it did provoke a reminder for me because on my way home, and I had Coco with me, my own dog, and on the way home I saw a woman as I was driving past down a very busy big road. It's not a highway, but it's a very busy road. And I saw a woman on the side of the road on the ground with her dog, and she was obviously trying to get her dog water, you know, trying to feed him water. Obviously he overheated. I had passed her, and then I just felt like this, you know, God pulled me, and I said, I need to figure out what's going on and whether or not I can help. And I knew I had water in my trunk, so I pull over and I'm like, can I help you? And She had this Great Dane. So she had this big-ass Dalmatian-looking Great Dane, beautiful, name is Bella. And she was definitely, you know, struggling to keep him cooled down. It warms up really, really fast here in Atlanta this morning. So no judgment from anybody in regards to it. And it definitely wasn't going to be any judgment from me. I asked her where she was going, where she was headed, how far she had to walk to get home, and it was quite a while. It was going to be about 4 miles of a walk with a Great Dane in the heat. So I offered to take her home. And so I drove her home, gave her a big bottle of SmartWater immediately to get into the dog. So my reminder to everybody is this: it's hot out there. It's hot out there for you. Let alone for your children and for pets. And children of all ages, especially those that can't tell you that you're leaving me in a hot, steamy car. But, you know, but the point is you need to take care of yourself and then you need to make sure you're taking care in this heat with your children and your pets or any loved ones. And stay hydrated. Just make sure if you're going to go out in this heat even if it's first thing in the morning. She said that she started walking from her one location to the other at 7:30 this morning, and it was beautiful here. And here it was about 10 o'clock in the morning, she was still walking, and it got extremely humid and hot very quickly. So thank you for allowing me to divert there. I just want to make sure all of you are staying hydrated and cool and protected. During the summer and/or whatever climate it is wherever you are around the world. Alright, so we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we're gonna dive into this conversation about shedding your mid-year bitch. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity. So they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate-sized clients. Go to ngtaxsolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern Time.. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome everybody. In the heat of the summer, in July, we're going to be shedding the shedding the mid-year bitch. And I'm certainly shedding clothes at the moment as it heats up here, not only in Atlanta but in my house. But it's a good analogy and it's a good visual as well when it comes to really shedding whatever mid-year bitch you might be dealing with. Let me explain that a little bit more. It's— we're halfway through the year, actually more than halfway through the year. For those of you who are goal setters like myself, you may be really stressing out right now. Whether or not you're meeting them, whether or not you bit off more than you can chew, whether or not maybe you didn't set them like me this year. For someone who is a regular, I mean I'm talking daily goal setter, I've spoken to you a lot over the past 6 months. About the fact that at the beginning of the year I was really stuck for a couple of months. I didn't have goals. I kind of told myself I wasn't going to set goals. I was, you know, definitely going to be kind of putting out big things that I knew I wanted to work on, but I wasn't going to pressure myself. So if you're like that at all, because you are a goal setter, and it's mid-year and you're either off track are really, really far away and/or you didn't even set your goals this beginning of the year, I don't want you stressing over it. If you're someone who, you know, they don't, blah, blah, if you're someone who doesn't set goals, you just kind of go day by day and whatnot, that could be stressful as well. And maybe what you're hearing is, you know, you're reading about successful people that one of their number one tools or top tool is goal setting. So maybe you're stressed out about that, feeling pressure that you should. Or maybe you just kind of woke up, realized it was July 9th and went, oh crap, you know, we're about to see Christmas decorations soon and I haven't done much this year. I kind of experienced some of that over the weekend. I was okay, like I said, okay with how I went about pushing through and moving through my, you know, being stuck at the beginning of the year, moving through big projects that I knew I was working on and felt really good about where I was going. But I also, in the past like 6 weeks, fell off of my Weight Watchers program, the consistency I had there for the last year and a half. My writing started getting, what I will say, lazy, meaning I have— I've talked to you all about hiring a screenwriter/writing coach, and I had been delaying him and delaying him and delaying him, and over the weekend that started to bother me. So what I did for myself Sunday night had nothing really to do with mid-year, but it did provoke this conversation today, or the angle we're going to take about it, because all of a sudden Sunday I was just really feeling yucky, is the only word I'll come up with right now, about where I was on July 7th looking around going, oh my gosh, it's going to be, you know, January 1st. And I'm really, as I've spoken to all of you about, really trying to stay in the present, in the now, not worried about the past, not stressing about tomorrow, but only focusing on right now. However, I went to the dark side and started thinking about what it is I want to achieve for the balance of the year. And I sat down and I created a plan. Now, and that's what I wanted to kind of talk through with you on the different types of plans you could be working on and some tips and strategies so you're not stressing out. You're kind of converting as quickly as possible that yuckiness into an actionable plan and then even distilling that down to where plan for many people sounds very anal, sounds very restrictive, sounds very responsible and accountable, and maybe you don't want to feel that way. So I want to loosen the reins a bit and make sure that all of us, including myself, are being realistic in regards to how we're going about each and every one of our days. Because regardless if you have big career work or, you know, adventurous goals, none of us should want to wake up in the morning, put our feet on the ground, and, and kind of go out to take on the world without a reason and a purpose for doing that. And that's really, when you break it down, what goals are. It's just ensuring that you're paying attention to the fact that you're on this earth for a reason. You have a purpose and you have a legacy to establish. And whether you're 20 and you're so far from thinking about legacy and what you're going to leave behind when you, you know, leave this world, or you're 75, 80, 90. We don't know when, in my faith, you know, the God above chooses our time to be. I just know for me, I don't want to be— I'm, you know, I'm sure I'm going to be caught off guard, but I don't want to be unprepared. I don't want to have not lived I don't want to have not, you know, even put notches in my belt. That's a very old analogy, but I don't want to leave without achieving and living my passion. So I want you to be thinking about a few things just as I did when I sat down on Sunday night. And some of you who know me will be very surprised as to the kind of the the approach that I took to my own reassessment and goal setting, but I thought maybe some of you could leverage it as well. So first what I did was I did sit down, and I would like you to as well, is sit down and assess your progress against your goals. Hopefully at the beginning of the year if you established goals or maybe yesterday, uh, you wrote them down, you got them out of your head, from swirling and you put them on a piece of paper in black and white, blue and white, whatever, and you established your goals. Now this is a great time to sit down and say, okay, so how am I doing against those goals that I established? But I need you to be real about it. And what I mean by that is, all right, so of the goals that I you know, set for myself. How did I do? Did, you know, have I met them? How far away am I from them? Uh, are they even a priority to me today like they were on January 1st or on February 20th or on May 30th? Are they even a priority anymore? Uh, was I trying to do too much? Especially if you're not achieving, you know, ask yourself, am I, did I bite off more than I can chew? Am I trying too hard? Am I trying to do too much? Is that why I can't get anything done? Because as a coach especially, all I hear on a regular basis from my clients is, I just don't have enough time. I just had too much to do. Well, at some point, granted, when I'm speaking to them, say on a Wednesday, and I ask them, okay, how long has this been going on? If it's only been going on for a few days and they did bite off more than they can chew, or it's that time of year and, you know, they have so much to do that they can't focus on what they should be focused on, you know, I'll ask them to be easy on themselves. I'll ask them to forgive themselves for for feeling that stress and that pull. If it is something that's gone on for weeks, a month, or months, even in my case when I was stuck for those few months, then we have to dig a little deeper. Then you need to dig a little deeper and ask you harder questions. Am I trying, you know, too hard? Did I, you know, bite off more than I could chew? Am I trying to do too much? Am I doing what's absolutely necessary in order to achieve my goal? Or am I doing things and kind of filling in my time with things because I'm avoiding my goals? I'm avoiding that accountability. I'm avoiding that responsibility. And then you have to go as far as ask yourself, am I avoiding the potential missteps, that maybe I, you know, just don't have the skill or the capability or the knowledge around this goal that I've set, or I don't, you know, I'm scared that if I do achieve it, what does that mean to me? A lot of people, they don't only deal with failure of failing, but they have, oh, I'm sorry, a fear of failing. They also have a fear of success. They have a fear of being accountable. They have a fear of change. And those things can be just as debilitating. And I also want you to look at when you're, when you're struggling in that vein at the simple things. Are there much simpler things that you could be doing that sure might extend the amount of time, the deadline that you set for achieving that goal, at the same time taking it in smaller bits. Feels more comfortable to you. Some of us, like myself, you know, love taking risks, love just jumping in with both feet, both hands, the head, everything, and yet we are very, very ill-prepared or ill-experienced, but we realize that we can learn along the way. There's others that have to do it a little bit more daintily. They have to do it a little, you know, more gently and slowly. And you know what? That's okay. Anybody who tells you it's not, you just need to look at them and go, "Thank you very much for your opinion," and move on. Because especially as a coach, you know, and kind of going through my own journey of shedding and letting go of control and that kind of thing, I definitely have to look at clients, peers, friends, vendors, and I need to understand how they best operate, how they're most productive, what brings them joy and peace and calm in their lives, and adjust to it and allow them to maintain. Now I'll try to push them, but if I see that that push is not necessarily resistance, it's just not in their DNA, then I back off. So I want you to look at all those things about, you know, being real. Is— did you set your goal too big? Are you doing the right things that are absolutely necessary? Are you trying to do too much? And can you just kind of back off and look at the simple things about your goals? All right. Now, from an assessment perspective, and looking backwards perspective, that's pretty much what I want you to— all I want you to do. I don't want you to be beating yourself up. I don't want you to be spending time, uh, worrying and feeling guilty or any other negative bitch about what happened up until 5 minutes ago. What I want you to do is now immediately kind of hit that reset button. And say, okay, so what am I going to do as of right now in this moment of time moving forward? And I want you to define your plan. Now I will touch on SMART goals as it pertains to this part of the discussion. You can also go to shendovich.com and you'll find an article, a blog posting, that I did on this subject, and it describes the SMART process of establishing your goals in more detail. For those of you who aren't familiar with SMART goals, it's an acronym, and I love it because it is so simple. Talk about being simple. But I love it because the approach is extremely smart. The biggest challenge I have found people have when it comes to setting their goals forgetting about the realistic part, but the SMART process will have you looking at it again. It's more so the fact that goals have to be as tangible and as alive, I'll call it, as possible. They can't be haphazard. They can't be general. They can't be too specific.— too simplified. They have to really have a lot of meat on their bones in order for you to then be able to convert those goals into actions of which then you take to then achieve what goal it was that you set out to accomplish. All right. So it's an acronym. So we're going to break it down. So the S is for specific. As I said, you have to come up with as specific of a goal as possible. So I mentioned my Weight Watchers, and because of my evaluation on Sunday, one, and feeling yucky on Sunday, one of the reasons why is because I knew that I didn't gain a lot of weight over my goal that I already achieved. So I'm a lifetime member with Weight Watchers, which means I achieved the goal that I set out to achieve. And it was about, it was a 32-pound weight loss. And I knew that I didn't kind of go over 150, so that brings me to 150. So I knew I didn't go over it too far, yet I was feeling yucky. Great word, isn't it? And so I said, okay, I have to do something about it. So let's back into that and say, So S being for specific means you have to be very specific about your goal, that you want to lose weight. Then you're going to get— you're going to extend that to say you want to lose weight doing X, Y, and Z, and you want to do it by— and we'll talk through all this— but by a certain deadline. So your S is getting specific about whatever the goal is that you're setting out to do. Of what it is that you want to achieve. It could be you want to earn more money, you want a promotion, you want to change jobs, you want to take on additional work, you want to lose weight, you want to pursue a passion, you want to start a new skill, learn a new skill, you want to find a relationship. But even finding the relationship, you need to get it more specific. I want to find, uh, you know, act as if you're on— you know, one of the match.coms or eHarmonys or Plenty of Fish. You know, I want to meet a man or woman to get married within the next, you know, X amount of months, whatever the case might be. So get as specific as you can within your goal. M is that measurement, that metric or measurement that you use. If it's weight, it's the pounds you want to lose. Or the body fat or the BMI or any of those other metrics. If it's promotion, it's your salary or it's the level. A lot of my clients, their companies have ratings and levels on the hierarchy, up the ladder so to speak. So they'll use that. It could be that you want to earn a specific amount of money in your job. And that might influence even if you get a promotion, what that— where you are today and where you want to go. So it's typically a very quantifiable measure. Now you may find that not all of your goals are measurable. I want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Now, and it doesn't really have a goal, the measure— oh, I'm sorry, it doesn't have a quantifiable measure. The measurement is that you've reached the peak. Not halfway, unless that's what you determined, but it's that you've reached the peak. All right? Now A is— it's not achievable, it's not attainable. The A stands for what actions are you going to take toward that goal? So if it's weight loss, what are you specific specifically going to do from the moment you wake up to the moment you put your head down? What are those things you're going to do throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout the month? You know, if it is about a promotion, what steps are you going to take to get a promotion? If it's about, you know, increasing or asking for a pay raise, what steps are you going to take? Finding a new job, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, what's the steps What steps are you going to take? What actions? A for actions. And then R, and this kind of varies, and I mentioned it earlier, the R you want to use is, is my goal realistic or relevant? You can look at it either way. If I'm wanting that $100,000 job but I only have a $40,000 job right now, is it realistic? That I can get to that $100,000 job. Now before you say, "No way, you can't go from $40,000 to $100,000," I'm here to tell you you're wrong, uh, well, or that it depends because you could be taking steps. Maybe you took a job at $40,000 because of the fact that you had family or other obligations that didn't allow you to go after that $100,000 job yet everything that you're doing, everything that you've done, and what you're going to do are all going to allow you to pursue that $100,000 job. If it's the weight loss, if you set a goal of, you know, 30 pounds and you've, you know, actions that you've said are going to be that you're going to go to the gym every day, you're going to play pickleball, you're going to swim, whatever the case might be, you need to say to yourself, is— are all those elements of this goal realistic? Are they relevant to my, you know, what it is that I want to achieve? Because if you've never been on a diet or you've never been an active gym member or you've never played a sport or you've never swam, they may not be realistic. You might be biting off more than you can chew, like we talked about earlier. So your R— look at it as realistic or relevant, you want to make sure that it fits because you don't want to set yourself up to fail from the get-go. You want to ensure that you're putting yourself in a place that you can succeed. And then the T is for timeline. Now you'll see a lot of quotes out there about the fact that a goal is only a dream until you put a timeline or a deadline to it. And I would have to agree with it. You can sit around all day long and daydream. You can sit around all day long and wish and hope and try, but until you say this is what I'm going to do and what I'm going to achieve and these are the steps I'm going to take and I've determined that it is very realistic and I have my measurements to go along. And I'm going to do it by this date or a series of milestones. Until you've done all that, it is purely a dream or a wish. You need to take any of those things that you're daydreaming about, that your heart's singing about, that you're passionate about. If you want to put— make them a reality, then you have to kind of articulate them into a SMART goal. And you have to put a timeline or a deadline to them. But that is the T of SMART. So you have specific, measurable, actionable, relevant or realistic, and timeline. And again, you can go to sheddythebitch.com to our latest blog post to get a more lengthy description in regards to that. All right, we have a number of other things that we want to discuss, so we're going to take a break. We get back, I'm going to move forward into now taking those SMART goals, turning it into a plan of which then you can even not only hit that reset button, but you'll know that you're on a plan for success. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to ngtaxsolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch Shedding the Bitch Radio and follow the program for all the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone, we're talking how you shed your mid-year bitch. Say you're just stressed out the fact that it is July 9th and half the year is gone and your life is flying by and you don't know what to do. And you're far, far, far away from your goals, what can you do to kind of just shed them, get calm, hit that reset button, and move forward? So we've talked about assessing your progress, being real about not only where you're at, but what did you do when you set these goals up. Then we said, okay, we're going to hit the reset button. And create our plan for the balance of the year. And I had mentioned to you that this was provoked by my own yuckiness on Sunday and sitting down and saying, okay, I need to— I need to get— I need to articulate and I need to tangibilize what it is I want to be doing for the rest of the year. Now, I say that because I'm actually going to share it and I just took a picture while we took a break of my journal with my plan on it. And I'm going to share that on a blog post after the program today. However, we also talked about SMART goals and the very smart and simple approach of defining goals. And it's the approach that I've used for years And, you know, millions of other people do too, and you can go online and Google SMART approach or go to ShedInTheBitch.com and you'll find tons of coaches, consultants, business leaders that refer to the SMART approach to goal setting. But quite honestly, that's not what I did Sunday night. I am still in that place this year and I'm kind of really gaining an appreciation for it. That I'm letting go of my, my need to be so anal. And that's just me. And I know it's also short, short-term because I, you know, I— yes, I'm happy giving up control, but yet at the same time, if it's things that I like to do for myself that gives me calm and peace, then I'm okay with a little bit of that controlling you know, nature. And my goal setting, especially in the SMART approach, is one of those things. But this year I just, I'm not feeling it. So I didn't do what I just suggested to you to do. And that's okay. Whatever approach you take to getting out of your head and onto a piece of paper and then turning it into action with measurements and timelines. Whatever that looks like for you, that's what you should and need to be doing. So what I wanted to do Sunday night is I also felt a pull toward my, my spiritual faith place in the world. As of, you know, right now, these days. And so the first thing that I wrote without even consciously knowing that I wrote it until after I do, because I tend to write a lot, especially when I'm journaling like that. I don't edit it, I don't think about it, I just write whatever's coming out of my pencil. And I wrote July 7th, that was Sunday, my partnership with God plan. My Partnership with God Plan. Now, for those of you who, you know, don't consider yourself religious, or maybe you're even atheist or agnostic, you don't believe in God, whatever the case might be, don't, don't, you know, turn off this podcast. Continue listening. It's not going to get religious and preachy for you. This is just me, and it was just words that I wrote down because I did feel, although I'm very in tune and in touch with my faith and my belief in God. I just— I needed— I just needed to, so I just allowed myself to write my partnership with God plan. And so I suggest to you, whatever the theme, whatever is pulling you toward what goals and what pursuits you want to take on in the next 6 months before the end of the year, articulate it, define it, create it that way. And don't even use the SMART goal approach. But if you aren't familiar with setting goals and you want to be sure that you're tangibilizing them enough to make sure that they're actionable and achievable, then I strongly, strongly advocate the SMART approach. So you'll see when I post this image that I just took. You'll see that the approach that I took was simply I created 3 columns in my journal. One I put God, one I put work, and one I put play and health. I lump those 2 together. So those are 3 core areas of my life is my work, my social, which I'll call my plan, and my health, and then my faith. Or in this case I wrote my God for my partnership with God plan. And I just— I didn't put timelines. I didn't put a great amount of detail or specificity. I didn't list a lot of actions. Yet I am using this now— well, it's only been a couple days, but I'm using it to kind of look at and be sure that I'm grounded in the plan that I want. And that's what I want you to really take away from this conversation today is no matter how you might define your plan, make it to where at least you know not only is it on paper, black and white or whatever color pen you choose, and it's in a journal that you can refer to, not on a piece of paper you're going to throw away, but if you have to have it on a piece of paper, then you can tack it to, you know, a wall or tape it to your refrigerator, whatever the case might be. But have enough to where you know exactly what it is that you need to be doing every day. All right? So I'm just going to share with you before you see it on an image by the end of the day, I'm going to share with you kind of, you know, how I decided that I wanted to articulate the things I want to start working on and achieve them before the end of the year. Now, December 31, 2019 is my end goal. That's as far as I went as far as that's concerned.

Concerns.

So under my God, I wrote daily prayers, daily thankfulness, daily gratitude, daily ask, daily affirmations, daily devotion, daily forgiveness, daily focus on not judging. So those are, if you were to look at the SMART goal approach, those are my actions, the things I want to be doing each and every day. In this case, which will lead to a week, which will lead to a month, which will lead to the 6 months. As far as work, I wrote daily writing, daily budgeting, daily prospecting, and my goal, kind of themed for myself, is just more. Now I'm not going to go into a lot about what that means. That's more about me and that's not going to benefit you. Focusing on me, but I wanted a theme what I wanted my work all to be. And then for my play and health, it was my Weight Watchers tracking, watching what I eat again, being stress-free, playing pickleball, weights, doing weights, and stretching. I'm a horrible stretcher. So like I said, mine are very high level and general with the end goal of December 31st, 2019. So at least I handled the, you know, kind of listing specificity without a lot of it. Putting what actions I'm going to take. They are all relevant and realistic and it does happen to have a timeline. I would just say that there's no measurements here. I didn't say I want to lose, you know, 5 pounds or I want to earn so much money or have, you know, so many new clients. I decided for myself, you know, Sunday night as I'm scribbling, you know, July 7th, my partnership with God plan, all around thankfulness, by the way. You know, that was just how I wanted to define it. So I stress to you, use the SMART method. Again, if you're not familiar with Setting goals or just to find something of your own. Just get it out of your head onto a piece of paper in a way that will allow you each and every day to look at it and know what you need to do and then with a timeline of when you want to achieve it by. Now lastly, what I want to mention as part of your plan is I want you to be thinking about what is your end state of being. And again, it's not the measurements necessarily. It's not those numbers. Metrics that you might define or may not define. It's more so what is the state of being? Will all of this work, all this focus, all of this energy that you put into your goals, what is it going to mean to you? What is it— how is it going to change you, enrich you? So I'll read you what I wrote. I won't read all of it and bore you to death. You'll see it online when I post this picture. But so my end goal was December 31, 2019. I simply wrote, "Be happy, calm, joyful, open, and love while being fit, strong, healthy, which allows me to win new business, earn higher rates for the work that I perform, win my movies— win my movies owed— oh, win my money owed to me." I won't go into much of that. "Obtain new clients." new rentals, new speaking opportunities, which allow me to move into my— oh, move back into my main house. So many of you who listen to the program, you know that part of my goal several years ago was to do whatever it takes to be able to write and to get my screenplays published— or not published, but developed, produced. On the big screen. And part of that, one of the compromises and sacrifices that I chose to make was to move into my guest house and rent my main house so I had that income that would allow me to write. So this goal is going to allow me to potentially swap, move back into my main house and rent my guest house. So then I just wrote, and don't stop at yes. Don't stop at yes. You can feel free to ask me if you see this and when you see it on my blog post. I won't spend a lot of time talking about it here right now. But there's a great relevance to my statement here about don't stop at yes. And I wrote keep adding, enriching, and succeeding. So all I want you to really be considering as you're assessing your progress, being real about, you know, where you were January, what you actually set up as far as goals, and making sure that they were realistic for yourself. Hitting that reset button. You have an opportunity now to define define your plan however you choose to want to do that. And, and be sure through this you're asking yourself, am I loving what I'm doing? Because if you're not loving what you're doing, even if it's the smallest, smallest, smallest little thing— no one likes to diet, yet you, you learn to love it when you're seeing the results that you want. You love it when you actually have more energy, more stamina, more joy as a result of it. So you all of a sudden realize that you love kale, or you love climbing 1,000 stairs, as painful as it is, because you're loving the results. So if you're finding that you're not loving what you're doing, then especially right now, part of your shedding the mid-year bitch would be to say, you know what, even if I did establish it as a goal or an action to achieve that goal, I, you know, I'm just, it's not bringing me joy, it's not bringing me any kind of satisfaction or happiness, I'm no longer going to do it. And there's nothing wrong with deleting things out of your life, people, places, things, tasks, activities, none of it. So I want you to keep that in mind. And delete those things. I've had, and I have a lot of conversations with people about deletion, and maybe we'll have a dedicated episode in regards to it. But deletion, learning, you know, the concept of deletion, but more so taking action on deleting the people, places, things, actions, activities, tasks in your— that don't bring you joy, that don't bring you happiness, that don't bring you any kind of enjoyment regardless of how easy or hard they are, you need to be able to delete them. Now ladies, for you that might be saying no, is a, you know, kind of a subset of deletion. But delete it. Delete those friends that don't bring you joy. Delete those places that you hang out or go or do because they're not benefiting you. They're dragging you down, not lifting you up. Learn deletion. It's a very powerful technique, concept, tool. Should you learn to do it. And then what I want you to do is now that you've hit the reset button, you've defined your goal, you've really looked at it going, do I really want to be doing it? Do I love it or do I want to do delete it. I want you to reset that date. For some of you it may not be December 31st. For some of you it may be next month or in a couple of months, whatever the case might be. You might say, "No, I want to give myself a year, so it's July of next year." So establish that date. Now, one last thing, and I'm actually not going to take a break because I want to get this in before we wrap up. One last thing I want you to keep in mind is this is a plan, whether you made it for the year, for a month, or for this next 6 months. It's a plan that is living and breathing, so it's going to change, it's going to move, it's going to get bigger, it's going to get smaller, it's going to get more liberating and freeing and joyful to you. At the same time, it can get suffocating and overwhelming. You need to learn to be nimble and flexible and make the changes that you need to make, not only to your plan but more so to yourself, because you're changing as you're taking actions and moving forward and towards your goals. You're changing whether you see it or believe it or not. And, and Whether you're seeking other people noticing it, that should be your last bit of concern. And I mention this because I even had a client who I was hired to help address some, I'll call it performance, performance behavior, and it really is more personality behavior. You know, he was pretty much told that they needed to see change. They needed to, you know, experience and see physically, verbally, emotionally, they needed to see change. Yet what they weren't necessarily expecting that they're going to have to go up to him and affirm or tell him or, you know, make it as touchable, I guess, as he was thinking. It was more so that they wanted to kind of, you know, hear from other people through experiences and through activities and through engagement with this individual that they may not say, oh, you know, he's no longer doing this, or oh, did you see that, but they're just feeling something and they're kind of observing and witnessing something different in him. And at first he didn't really get that. He was like, no, I need to be sure, and part of my measurements is to be sure that, you know, this person and this person and this person tells me and/or writes it down on a piece of paper or, you know, shares it with my boss. I'm like, that's— you're missing the point. Some of these things that we're working on and some of the results that we're getting, we need to be more concerned about how we individually are seeing ourselves change and grow as a result of them. Don't worry about whether or not somebody is coming up to you and patting you on the back and saying, hey, you look great, you must have lost a lot of weight. I have yet to have anyone acknowledge my weight loss. 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 especially, I would have been— I would have been beating myself up and feeling so insecure about that point. Uh, now it's like, you know what, you know, I'm not gonna let that— I'm proud of myself, I'm happy with myself, that's all that matters. Um, I'm not going to get worked up about someone else not acknowledging it. They have their own bitches to deal with, I have mine. And, uh, and I also have my riches to appreciate and acknowledge and honor within myself. And that's, you know, what I would advise all of you to do as well. Okay, but I kind of, um, digress on something that I wanted to get to this point. So now that you have this plan and this, you know, whether it's 6 months, let's say it is, I want you to break down that plan. I want you to break the 6 months down to the quarter, which means you know, every 3 months. I want you to then have a 3-month plan that you break down to a month, then that month to the week, and the week to the day. And why I want you to do this is the majority of the time I hear people fail or misstep in their goals is because it's so overwhelming to them. And/or they say, "Oh, I have 6 months to lose weight," or, "I have 6 months to learn that skill," or, "Oh, I have 6 months to change my life." I have to ask for that promotion or that raise or that relationship. So they hold off on it and they put fone and they ignore it and they avoid it. So if you can always have that 6-month date out there but yet you're breaking it down into these smaller chunks and taking action as you define them down into that quarter, month, week, or day, then you'll be pleasantly surprised Trust me, you'll be pleasantly surprised when you lift your head up on December 15th and you're like, "Oh, December 31st is right around the corner and look how far I've come and I'm so close to achieving my goal." So I want you to kind of see your plan in smaller increments so that you don't get that overwhelm, you don't get that burnout, you don't get that discouragement, you don't let the first hiccup in your plan to sabotage you. And so let me give you a real quick for instance on that. So I mentioned Weight Watchers at the beginning, and there was a reason I wanted to call it back into our conversation. So I went and I had mentioned that my lifetime goal weight is 150. I didn't think I had too many pounds over that. You can't go 2 pounds over. Without losing your lifetime and having to pay the full amount and so forth and so on. And, uh, so, uh, when I wrote down my goal on Friday, was feeling yucky— or I'm sorry, on Sunday— was feeling yucky, decided I was going to Weight Watchers. I was supposed to go yesterday, did not. Gave myself a little ding because I did not. So got up the first thing this morning and made myself go, and I am 5.5 over my goal. So I'm 3.5 over where I could be to maintain my lifetime membership. I can't beat myself up over that. All I can do is look at my plan and start it as of right now. And that's what I plan to do. That's what I hope you plan to do for yourself, whatever goals you might have. Be easy on yourself, shed that mid-year bitch, and just start working it as of right now. I'll look forward to having you right back here next Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Everybody, thank you, and go to Apple Podcasts or sheddingthebitch.com to download any of our episodes of Shedding the Bitch Radio. Talk to you soon. Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.