Episode 512: My Goals for 2026

No need to whine, it's whiny palooza. Have some wine and join us on the whiny palooza podcast with Rebecca Greene.

Welcome to the whiny palooza podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Greene. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles, failures, and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family.

Hello everybody, happy Winey Palooza Wednesday!

Happy Winey Palooza Wednesday!

Um, guess where I just was?

Where were you, honey?

I was at high school orientation for my baby.

That's crazy.

I'm not sending the baby to high school.

You're not? Okay. Are we— how are we going to keep her home? How are you going to pull that off?

Oh my God. Anyways, we're live, we're live, it's working.

Yes.

So we took— I'm putting a couple weeks off in quotes because we did go live last week to say Happy New Year.

Yeah.

So we hope you had, um, a wonderful holiday season. I went to the dentist yesterday and I didn't tell Seth this, but the dentist and his assistant were talking about how happy they were that the holiday load was over and that they didn't have to deal with the holidays anymore. Hi Randy, how are you? Hope you had wonderful holidays. So they were like, wrap it up, holidays are done, back to the routine. They're like, we're so happy to be back at work and we're so happy the holidays are over. And I was like, oh my God, this is totally parents.

You want to go back?

Um, I, I will say the holiday is a big load for parents, so I'm sure parents are feeling some relief. Everybody's putting their house back together, and I finished all of my returns. I will put my house back together this weekend. I still have decorations everywhere. And, um, I did work on my goals for 2026. Did you work on your goals?

I did.

Um, I definitely think that Seth probably has a lot more goals than I do. I am a firm believer, and I would love to hear Seth's opinion, but I'm a firm believer of, uh, doing little bits.

Seth, oh my God, I'm gonna fall over! Where did you get that from?

I like to do— I want to encourage everybody to have just goals in life all the time, not just in January, because hopefully We're going to make goals, we're going to achieve them, and then we're going to make new goals. And hopefully when 2027 comes, we'll have not only achieved the goals that I'm going to talk about now, but I'll have already made new goals and achieved those too. Yes. So I feel like I am constantly making new goals. It's not just for January. And, um, I don't want you to feel like you have to make these like big huge goals. It can be something small. It could be, I'm gonna read 10 pages every night. It could be, I'm gonna tidy up my house for 15 minutes every night.

Tie you down to only let you read 10 pages. I have to keep all the books hidden and your phone.

Oh my God, stop it.

It's awesome.

What? Why would you say that's awesome?

That's awesome that you read so much. It was a compliment. I was saying there's no way I could get you to only read 10 pages a day, and I love that about you.

Okay, so if it's a good book, then I don't want to put it down.

No, then it's good luck, honey, you're going to bed by yourself.

And sometimes I get so close to the end and it could be like 100 pages.

Gotta stay up till 2 in the morning.

And I'm like, but I want to know what happens. So anyways, your goals— there is no right or wrong. I'm thinking about making a reading goal.

I definitely didn't do that. I didn't think about that.

Um, So what was I saying? So I don't want you to feel like you have to make these big goals. I don't want you to make— I don't want you to think that any goal is too small. I don't want you to think that any goal is wrong. I do want to tell you that when I was working with families, we always talked about SMART goals, which you know what SMART goals are.

I do.

And if you write— I don't want to overwhelm you. When people hear this, they run away, and I'm gonna— yes. Yes, honey, you're not normal.

Thank you, sweetheart.

You're not normal. Normal people run away. Thanks. So, um, I don't want you to be overwhelmed or think SMART goals are like these big grandiose scary things. It's just to help you be more successful.

It's just a framework we use for setting goals. We use it every week at work.

Okay, so If you just say something off the cuff and it's not specific or measurable, how do you know if you achieve it, right?

That's a dream, not a goal.

So you want your goal to be specific. So SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based. So achievable means I'm not going to say I'm going to lose 50 pounds tomorrow.

You wouldn't lose 50 pounds in one day, it is unrealistic.

I'm just saying, that's not achievable. I'm gonna lose 1 pound this week. That is achievable, that is realistic, that is measurable and specific. So we want it to be time-based. We don't want to say, "At some point I'm going to lose a pound." We want to say, "No, this week, next Wednesday, I will be a pound lighter." So hopefully I'm making sense.

You are.

Hopefully you can write at least one SMART goal after you hear this, and hopefully you can send this to someone who you think will also want to write goals with us. Everybody needs goals.

Yes, you gotta move towards something, otherwise you'll go backwards.

So the other thing that I find a lot less intimidating to people, if you are like, "Rebecca, I am not writing a goal. It's just not my thing." I'm not upset with you. I'm gonna give you another idea. You can have a word that you want to attract in your life. So I named my cat, who is deceased, I named her Hope because I felt like I needed more hope in my life. I was, I was feeling very sad about things at that point, and I wanted to have more hope. So I named my cat Hope, and it worked for me.

And you said hope a lot of times during the day, and look at that, you got more hopeful.

Yes, we named our current two cats Faith and Joy because I feel like saying Faith and Joy all day long is really good for us. Those are two—

you are faithful and more joyful.

Those are two really positive words, words that I have chosen for myself. I chose grace. And what was the other word that I chose? Calm. One year I chose calm. I wanted to just be calmer. Which is why I love turtles. Fun fact about me, because it reminds me to slow down.

Turtle tchotchkes around the house.

I do love turtles. I need to be told— I don't like—

I can't believe you don't have a Lego turtle.

Okay, somebody just showed one. One of the girls that I follow on TikTok showed a Lego turtle and said, turtles are my favorite animal, look at this. And I said, oh, I need the turtle.

Is this like a pre-done set or did they make a, like, a turtle?

No, it's a turtle set that you build.

I guess you're gonna have to get that.

Yeah, you know I'm gonna get that. And they also have a new lily flower, and you know I have to get that.

Add it to the— we were talking about that at our holiday work lunch today, talking about— somebody said, did you know they have LEGO succulents? And I'm like, oh, we have a whole jungle of LEGO flowers in our house.

Did you tell them why?

That you and Lily like making them?

No, you know why it started.

Somebody gave you one as a present?

You know, it started because the cats eat my flowers.

Yeah. Oh yes, we can't buy flowers because the cats just eat them. So we— yes.

So I thought to myself, I'm not allowed to have flowers because my cats eat them and puke, so I'm gonna get myself Lego flowers. These are flowers that I can keep, right?

It would be lonely. We need lots of Lego flower friends because it's really fun. Okay, moving right along.

So my— so I told you my words At one point it was calm. Last year it was grace. I needed to give myself more grace. I'm going to tell you, if you are a woman—

what's your word for this?

No, I'm talking. If you are a woman listening to this, grace and compassion and enough are 3 words that I will throw your way. Maybe you can adopt one of them for 2026. My message that I am telling myself for 2026 is go with the flow and the operative word being flow. So this year my word is flow.

All right.

So we went from calm to grace to flow and I need to go with the flow more. And a perfect example is Max going away to school and I think I unsuccessfully flowed with that.

You didn't have a choice but to flow. But yes, there was— no, I think we both had some resistance.

I think there was too much resistance. Um, I still feel resistance. I'm like, can't he just stay home and go to UB? How many times have I said that?

Like every day, every other day. It's a lot.

Probably every other day.

It's a lot. You could go with the flow.

I could go with the flow. Um, so that is the word that came to me, whether it's my dog limping, my day not going as planned, my son away to school. Now my daughter wants to go away to school. Whatever comes my way, the goal is to flow more and resist less. So that is my theme for the year. But I'm gonna get a little bit more— I want to share a couple of my goals with you, um, just because I share them every year and because maybe it will inspire something for you. So you know that I'm gonna go with the flow more. I know what that's going to look like. That's gonna look like— a perfect example was the kids going back to school. Instead of being upset on Monday, instead of resisting going back to the routine, I embraced it and flowed with it. I was like, "This is good. We're back to the routine. The routine feels good." And I looked at the positives and I felt more flowy and less resistance. So to me, that's a start, the start of success with the work.

Love it.

So I'm gonna get more specific and measurable in my next goals. That's just like my theme, right? That's my theme.

I'm measuring this quantitatively. No, every day.

No, but I'm going to talk about, um, my dog first. My dog, for those of you who don't know, has been limping. The end of January will be a year of Tanner limping and has been to 5 or 6 doctors, all of which have not been able to help him, all of which have done— I mean, I will tell you, um, steroid shots, medications, chiropractic, acupuncture, laser therapy, x-rays, what have you, physical therapy. Physical therapy. What haven't we done for this dog?

Oh, don't say that. Now you're gonna get an answer what we haven't done. Okay, so we have done many things.

We have done So many appointments, so many doctors, so many vet visits for our dog. On the 20th, he will get an MRI, so I have next measurable, I have things that I'm doing for my dog for next steps. One of my goals is to work on my dog this year, to attempt to fix him. So a step in the direction of fixing him is getting him an MRI. So that's coming this month. I also, um, decided to switch his dog food and I'm now making his dog food in an attempt to— I don't know what's going on yet, but at this point in time it's something that I have control over to do better for him. So I've been making his food, I've been giving him supplements, and I'm doing what's within my control. And my goal is to have next steps to fix him.

Yes.

So Tanner is a huge goal for 2026.

For me, better.

Let's get our dog better. Please send good thoughts and prayers and vibes for our dog that is suffering. Um, he's definitely not happy with his leg, so hopefully we find out what's going on and hopefully there's something easily solvable. And let's get results that help us easy. Oh, Megan's watching! Hi Megan!

She says, can't wait to hear about the food.

Oh, I didn't tell you I was making his food. Yes, um, he's eating well now. Oh my God, he had a better breakfast than me. I'm like, why aren't I just eating the same breakfast? Why am I now having cereal after I made him this awesome breakfast? So, um, I— my goal for this year was to read 100 books. I read 134 books. My—

yeah, I didn't know your goal was 100 and you crushed it. That's awesome.

My goal is not to read more. My goal is to read less, which I'm going to tell you why.

Okay.

I would like to— and I'm not going to be upset with myself if next year I say that I read 135 books. Like, I'm not going to be upset with myself. My goal is to read less and write more.

Oh, I like that.

Okay.

I love it.

So instead of sitting down for 15 minutes and reading— and I did not do this today. Okay, so I need to really get on it tomorrow. So, and I haven't read either. I haven't read or written today. I would like to write for 15 minutes minimum every day. I have 3 book ideas, and I would— my goal is to publish at least 1 book this year. I have published 2. For those of you who don't know, you can find them on Amazon. But I would like to publish at— I have 3 that I want to do. 3 would be awesome this year, but 1 is the minimum goal.

Love it.

Okay, so we've got Tanner, we've got a book, and, um, I'm just going to talk about appointments for a minute. I wrote this down and I did— I did better because I wrote it down. So I wanted to write it down again, and I find that I'm really, really good at appointments for my kids and my pets. So I have 3 pets and 3 kids, so you can imagine that's a lot of juggling for me.

Yes.

So I do a lot of appointments, but I don't always make my own appointments. So I went to the dentist yesterday, and I, and I felt myself going, good job, you're taking care of yourself. Like, yes, remember to make appointments for yourself too. So my goal for this year, um, You know, I obviously need to do doctor's appointments. I will do doctor's appointments. I already did the dentist and the skin doctor this year.

So in the first week, that's awesome. You're off to a good start.

So, um, I would love to hear if you live near me and you love your primary care doctor and it's a woman, send her my way if she's taking new patients. I would love a good primary doctor. If she's holistic-minded, even better. So doctor's appointments for myself, but my ultimate goal for this year, which I could get done this month, is to get a facial. I have had one. Okay, but listen, this is like, this is like things that I need to write down so that I make it happen.

Yes.

I am—

if it's not written, it doesn't count.

I'm 49 years old, and I can tell you I've had one facial my whole life.

And that's amazing because you don't look 49. And if you start getting facials, I don't know if I'll be able to control myself. You'll look even younger.

So my goal is more appointments for myself.

They can be—

they can be fun. They don't have to be doctor.

No, they should— they should make it about fun. Okay, way more rewarding.

So more—

oh man, I got my teeth cleaned again. Sorry, dentists who are watching.

I want to take care of myself. I want to do my cleanings. I want to do my doctor's appointments, just routine stuff. I want to get that stuff done, but I want to make sure to get the happy appointments in. Get a massage, get a facial, like have some appointments.

Yes.

Okay, so anything else? I'm looking, I'm looking. Oh, I want to talk about your partner. So if you have a significant other, I want to encourage you to, um, Self-care is important. Agree.

Yes.

See, she wants a facial too. She says, let's go. Um, I lost my thought. Okay, if you have a significant other, what I want to tell you is to remember to share your goals with your significant other. So see, now Seth read my blog and he just heard it, so he got double exposure to— he knows what I'm working on. Yeah, we were at Wegmans in the self-checkout line, and I was rushing because I was with Seth, and I was like, Seth's gonna want to get out of here, is he's gonna— just let me finish.

Okay.

Seth was standing behind me, and I was like, I better go fast, and I was rushing, and I was pissy because I was rushing, and I was cranky. Why was I cranky that day? Did I not sleep? It's usually because I haven't slept.

This was over break, so I don't remember why you were cranky that day. But anyway, keep going with the story.

I usually sleep well. Sometimes I have nights where I don't, and then I'm cranky. But, um, I was rushing, and we had this conversation, and Seth said, one of my goals is not to rush you.

I've been working on that all last year.

He's like, I'm working on not rushing you.

I did not say the words hurry up once last year.

Okay. So from history, I may have picked this up from him.

I used to be guilty of rushing, you know, I freely admit that.

So he didn't tell me that he was working on this.

No, you were just supposed to notice that I wasn't rushing you anymore, right?

But if you don't tell me, so you—

I, I would have supposed to be like, wow, I feel so calm all the time because he's not rushing me. This is great, Seth, what are you doing? I love it.

I would have behaved differently had he communicated. So I am telling you that when you have a goal that impacts— you should share your goals with your partner anyway, but if it impacts them, then you really need to tell them. Because then I'm in the self-checkout line and I'm going, I don't have to rush, he's not in a hurry. Nope, right? Nope.

And I, I'm telling you my next goal, which affects you, so that you can give me all the credit and relax yourself because of it.

Okay, what's— what would you like to share with us?

Uh, my marital goal for 2026 um, is to be what I am calling proffensive. So the one thing that I wrote down that my wife asked me repeatedly to work on last year that I didn't because I was busy working on not rushing her was, uh, to be less defensive, to not be defensive. So I'm like, you can't be not something. So I came up— what's the opposite of defensive? I made up a word if it doesn't exist— of proffensive. So I'm going to be proffensive in 2026 so that you are never going, you're being so defensive.

What does that look like?

It looks like, um, me validating your feelings more as opposed to arguing with them or trying to diminish them or trying to convince you that you're wrong, because none of that gets us anywhere good.

I'm going to tell you that if you win an argument, you've— in general, in marriage, if you win an argument, you have lost.

Unless you're the wife.

The goal is not to win. The goal is for you both to communicate effectively and to come up with a resolution together. The goal is not to win. So I'm trying to think of an example from recent times, but we need to communicate and talk about it and come up with a resolution. Now I am also going to add in— I have told you this before— if I'm too heated Yep. I need a timeout.

Yep.

And then I will talk about it.

Yep.

But the goal is not for me to win.

I will give you all the timeouts and I won't rush you.

And I'm going to tell you that I don't want to win. I want us both to win.

Yes, you do say that.

I don't act like that? Is that what you're going to say?

I'm saying that you do say that.

Okay, I will show it. Okay, but I'm going to tell you all that part of love is wanting— like, I want Seth to be happy. I want the best for Seth. So, so when, when we're discussing things and figuring things out, like, I'm going to use the bat mitzvah as an example. Yes. So I said to Seth, screw the bat mitzvah. We did two. Two is good enough. Isn't that good enough? And Seth was like, all of our children will have a bar or bat mitzvah, and this is not negotiable. And I was like, well, I don't want to do any of the work. And I was like, this is too hard, I don't want to do this. So every so often I would be like, no, this is too hard, I don't want to do this. Um, Lily isn't the easiest to work with.

So anyways, constant fight for creative control.

I— well, I don't think Okay, I think that Seth is wrong when he says that. I think, I think that Lily wanted— Lily is a girl through and through. She wanted me to figure out— don't do this, don't do this, people— she wanted me to figure out what she wanted and deliver it.

So what am I— you want your person to be a mind reader? I've never heard that before.

So she wanted it to be very decorated, very detail-oriented. She didn't want to order it. She didn't want to tell me what that looked like. She wanted me to figure it out with flowers. Go big. Yeah, go big, make it beautiful, do your thing, and hope that I like it. And it's very girly. So in a relationship, we want to be specific. So, Mom, I want my centerpieces to look like this. I want the decorations to look like this. Like, if we want—

it would be wonderful if I could get them to look like this. I don't know if that's in the budget, but blah blah blah blah blah. She should have been asking as opposed to telling.

So, um, let's just say that the more specific and courteous we are, yes, the happier and easier it is. So it wasn't so easy. So my point in telling this story is that I could have been a bee and said, I'm washing my hands of it, it's all yours, I want nothing to do with it.

Volunteer to do the work.

I want nothing to do with it. I don't want to do it. It's all yours. You're the one who wants it. But I thought to myself, first of all, he's a guy. How is Seth going to do decorations? How is Seth going to do all the details?

He could, he could figure it out, but I was like, no, to a number of things.

I mean, right, it would have looked very different. Yep. So So I thought to myself, Seth really wants this and I care about him and this seems like a battle that he wants to win, so I'm going to give this to him.

I greatly appreciate that you did that.

So I think that what I'm saying is, in an argument, we want our spouse to be happy.

Yeah.

So just because we had arguments about it doesn't mean that I wanted to win. Yes, if that makes sense.

Yes, had you won that one and I had lost, you would probably still have an unhappy husband about that.

I would have heard about it for the rest of my life.

Pretty much. So I greatly appreciate you, um, doing an amazing job on her bat mitzvah and making me very happy in that department.

Well, and it, it's, it's very cool that Max's got canceled and we kept Ella's small and Lily's was kind of the big shebang.

Yes, we finally got to have one. Yes.

I mean, I definitely did not invite everybody I would have invited. We kept it a little bit smaller than what Max's was gonna be.

Right.

Basic part of it was space.

Right, the room wasn't gonna hold that many more. Megan says it was beautiful, thank you for attending.

Thank you, Megan. Thank you for coming and supporting us. And those are my goals. And Seth shared a couple of his goals.

I shared one, to be proffensive as opposed to defensive. I also, which relate, which you resemble, which I have a writing goal. I would like to finish the rewriting of both screenplays that I am working on this year. Um, so I am working every day towards that as well. And then I've got health and fitness and business goals.

So how cool would it be?

Yes.

For Seth's screenplay to be made into a movie.

That'd be awesome. And your book too could also be made into a movie, if one of the ones that I know about.

I thought about that. I was like manifesting it. I was like, I'm gonna write this, it's gonna be really good, and then I want it to become a movie.

Yes.

So I gotta get on writing it because I hope that you're all gonna like it. It's gonna take me hours and hours, but more than hours. Days and days and weeks and weeks and months and months.

You could do it.

I could do it.

One page a day, and then a year you'd have 365 pages.

Yes.

One page a day, 10-15 minutes, one page. That's all you gotta do, one page.

Yeah, I know. Okay, so good times.

Happy New Year, everybody.

Happy New Year. Please share with us. I want to hear your goals. I want to hear if you have a word of the year. Or a theme of the year. I love hearing from you. You guys have the best things to share. You have the best ideas. Honey, marketing man, why don't you tell them where my podcast was yesterday? Did you check today?

Um, her Rebecca's Winey Palooza podcast, um, I believe was number 13, the 13th-ranked parenting podcast yesterday. And I just want to say that number 19 was Daddy Diaries with Andy Cohen from Bravo. So yesterday Rebecca was ranked ahead of Andy Cohen, the celebrity. So she's blowing up. You knew her when.

And I messaged two of my dream guests.

Oh, I didn't know this.

So I will tell— so I have three people that I want to get on the podcast this year, so I'm gonna write it down. So see, there's another goal. Yeah, I have three dream guests that I would like to have on the podcast. So let's see if I can get them.

Tell them where your podcast was.

I did.

Good. Awesome.

I did. I think I did. Thank you, Megan. So, um, this— so the podcast that you can listen to in all the places this Friday. So my kids were home. Max is still home from school, but the girls were home for 2 weeks. They were all— we were all home together. So I said, here's the deal. I said, Lily, you had an awesome idea for the podcast. You're going to work. You're going to do one podcast. That's your one job for while you're off. And Max, you're home. You just had your first semester. You just crushed it. Your job is to do one podcast. And I asked Ella, and she said, we're going to wait for my birthday.

That's Ella for you.

So my thought was all the kids should have been interviewed over break. I got 2 out of 3.

Pretty good ratio.

Not so bad. So this Friday, Max is up first, and it's all about his reflections on his first semester. He did so well. I promise you will learn from him. I always learn from him. I also want to tell you to interview your children and your spouses and your parents. You learn so much about them. It was such an amazing experience, and I learned a lot about Max. So you can listen to that on Friday. And what else do you want to share with them?

Go to whineypalooza.com, sign up for the free email newsletter that will include all of Rebecca's amazing content, and please share it with other people. And another goal for 2026 is we will make actual tech support videos showing you how to rate, review, subscribe, and do all the things.

So if you know how to do all those things, thank you for doing them.

Yes, please do that.

And in my Whiny Palooza Mom group, which is free on Facebook, come join us if you're not already there. It's a free supportive community, and we had a 5-day January challenge. You can still jump in. You comment on all 5 days. It's a 5-day challenge with 5 questions. The more comments you make, the more chances you have of winning prizes.

Yay!

So I have to pick a winner, so I— you still have time to go comment. I will, I will work on picking a winner. And thank you so much for joining us. Um, first episode of 2026.

Happy New Year.

Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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Until next time.

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