Hey friend. So glad to have you back for another episode of the milspouse mastermind show. Today, we are talking all about how we set and pursue goals as military spouses. Where you are, why you’re there, why it even matters, and what we do to get moving on our goal setting journey. So if you are ready to find a framework that works for your life as a military spouse, so that you can actually set and achieve flexible goals, then let’s dive in to the episode.

I looked at my calendar this morning to see when this episode is releasing. And I said, oh my goodness, this is right after daylight savings time, which is one of those dates on the calendar that I absolutely hate.

[00:01:43] If you are a parent of small children, then you can probably sympathize with me. And I am so, so thankful to be living in a place for a couple of years where we don’t celebrate that. Or I guess not celebrate, celebrate is not the right word. But they don’t observe daylight savings time. So our time stays the same, which makes it so much easier when you have kiddos.

[00:02:05] I don’t know why we still follow daylight savings time, but if you are trying to get everybody’s schedules adjusted, just know that I am thinking of you today. All right. So we are talking about goal setting. I struggled with for several years, because I was like, what goals am I supposed to be setting?

[00:02:25] How do I set and achieve goals? And how do I do this? When I don’t control anything about my life, I don’t control where I live, how long I’ll be staying there. I don’t necessarily know when we’re going to be moving. Almost all of our moves up until this one that we have coming up for next summer. We already know that we’re moving, but most of our PCSes have been last minute PCSes.

[00:02:51] When I looked around, I saw a lot of different goal setting methods out there. Most of them assume the status quo, that your life is roughly going to stay the same. That it’s going to look the same and that you just go ahead and set and pursue goals, without all of this other chaos and life change going on in the background.

[00:03:11] And that’s just not our reality. So what we need is a flexible goal setting method that works for us, for the unpredictability of our lives, so that we can make progress towards what matters without getting super frustrated. Without giving up and throwing in the towel. Right? So before we talk about how we can actually set and pursue goals, we need to talk about why goal setting matters.

[00:03:40] Now, I don’t know how you feel about goals. I was so surprised. I am an ennagram one. I love checklists and goals and setting goals and checking things off my list and achieving goals and all of the things about making progress. I love achievement. Feelings of accomplishment.

[00:04:09] I was so surprised the first time I was talking to somebody and they were like, oh, I really don’t like setting goals because tit makes me feel like I have something I have to do. I’d rather just not worry about life. I’d rather just exist in life. So maybe you were in this place where you hate to set goals, where you’ve never set new year’s resolutions. Whether this is so far outside of your comfort zone, or what you love to do. There are definitely people that are just like you. I want to talk about why, first of all, goal setting matters.

[00:04:45] Research indicates that people who set goals and regularly self monitor are almost two and a half times more likely to attain their goals. So if we want to attain goals, then we actually have to set goals. If we want to move towards something, if we want to achieve anything, then setting goals is going to help us get there. At the end of the day, what matters is not what we accomplish, it’s who we become. But we need to develop a long-term sustainable habits that will help us fulfill our potential.

[00:05:16] And we want to fulfill our potential. Then goal setting is a great way to get us moving towards what matters. To doing the things that we were placed here to do. But goal setting only matters if we are setting and pursuing the right goals. And if we are doing it in a way that allows us to make progress towards those goals.

[00:05:42] So if we’re not setting the right goals, then we’re never going to be moving in the right direction. We’re never going to reach our potential. We’re never going to make the impact that we were created to make. We’re never going to become who we are meant to be. So the first key is making sure that we’re setting the right goals for us.

[00:06:04] But the second part of that puzzle is yes. So we can have the right goals, but if we don’t know how to pursue them, and if we don’t regularly assess our progress, then we’re probably not going to reach those goals. We’re going to get to this place where we just feel frustrated with our inability to make progress. We feel frustrated that we’re not hitting our goals and we just want to give up.

[00:06:26] So let’s talk about my flexible goal setting process. Now in the goal setting masterclass, which is a bonus in the milspouse purpose playbook, we talk about nine specific steps to sketch out your goals and start making progress, using my flexible goal setting method to set track and achieve your goals. We’re not going to go into all of those steps today, but I just want to talk to you about five specific things.

[00:06:57] These are kind of the core things that we need to do to set the right goals and make progress on them. So, number one, we need to know what we want and where we’re going. If we don’t have a clear vision for what we want our life to be about, we don’t know what we’re actually working towards, who we want to be, how we want to show up.

[00:07:20] Then we can’t set goals that get us to where we want to go. We have to have an end in mind. It’s not going to be something that’s super clear cut. You don’t have to have all of the pieces figured out. But you need to have a general direction that you’re moving in.

[00:07:40] So I had to look at a picture of what do I want my life to look like? Not in the sense of what are all the things I want to say that I accomplished or the type of house I want to live in. But in the sense of who do I want to be? How do I want to show up in my relationships, and how I live? How do I want to contribute to the world around me? So I have this direction that I’m headed in.

[00:08:04] I have my aspirational identity, and then I set skill and growth goals. Last week, we talked about the importance of setting growth goals. The growth wheel is our tool for assessing where we are in life, what feels off, and what areas we need to focus on so that we can start growing and moving towards this life of wholeness, so that we have well-being, so that our three fundamental needs are taken care of.

[00:08:33] Caring for and stewarding our self, our relationships and our purpose. The first thing is to assess where I am today. And then look at each of these 10 slices of my life and set growth goals for each area that lead me to who I want to be, and the legacy I want to leave. Yes, vocational or what I like to call purpose goals are a part of that puzzle, but they’re only one piece of the puzzle.

[00:09:04] So many goal setting methods, focus almost all of our time and energy on growing in our purpose or our vocation, our work that we do, the contribution that we make. But that is only one area of our life. And we’re going to be wildly out of balance if all of our time and energy is focused on growing in our career or in our business or whatever we’re doing to pursue purpose.

[00:09:35] If we focus everything on that, we’re going to achieve something there. But the rest of our life that gets us there is not going to be healthy and hardy and whole. What we are doing is talking about how purpose is more than what we do. It’s how we live and who we become in the process. And so we have to take a look at every single area of our life, and set growth goals for all areas of our life.

[00:10:02] Setting skill goals. Not what I want to achieve, but what areas of my life do I want to grow it? What skills do I want to develop? And so I set goals based on skills that I want to develop. Now after we know what direction we’re headed and what we actually want. We set growth goals and skill goals that help us lead us to who we want to become.

[00:10:28] Then we need to ask some really important questions. This is where we get clear on asking the right questions, so that we are making sure that we are setting the right goals for our current season of life. So we’re going to look at. Number one, what is it that brings me joy? I know that doesn’t seem like it applies to goal setting at all, but we really need this understanding of what we want our life to feel like, and what brings us joy.

[00:10:58] This is going to help us get clarity on what lights us up and how we can tap into our uniqueness. Then we need to look at what is distracting us from our ability to pursue goals. What commitments do I have in my schedule right now? What are my ongoing commitments? And then looking ahead and saying what upcoming demands, what prior projects are on the horizon?

[00:11:29] This is where I’m looking ahead and saying, okay. Do I have an idea of when we think we’re going to PCS? Or do I think there’s going to be a deployment coming up? You know, so much of it is last minute drops. We don’t know. And we just have to pivot when that happens, but as much as possible, I try to look ahead and say, I think this is going to be a season where we are all together as a team. Or I think this is going to be a season where we have a big life change happen.

[00:11:55] You don’t know until you get pregnant, but after you get pregnant, generally speaking, you know, that nine months later you’re going to have a baby and life is going to need to be different. So look at your calendar, your schedule, what is on the horizon and then say, Hey, what do I need to eliminate right now from my schedule?

[00:12:18] What do I need to do more of? What do I need to change so that I have time to pursue the goals that I want to set in the season? So we’re asking the question, what else is going on? That’s going to either help move towards my goals, or are going to get in the way of me moving towards my goals. How do I need to set up my schedule so that once I’ve set the goal, about how I want to grow in this season, that I can make time to pursue those goals. That I can prioritize those things in this season.

And then the fourth part of this process is regularly assessing your progress. So when we talk about goal setting, we’ve talked about how people who set and regularly assess their goals are more likely to achieve the goals. So it’s not just a matter of setting the goal and then forgetting about it. That’s why so many people set a new year’s resolution, but never stick to the resolution. Because they never assess their progress. Or they’ve messed up on the goal that they set and then they just give up.

[00:13:24] So we have to say, how am I moving towards this goal? How am I making progress? What’s getting in my way? And evaluate, okay, what’s not working. What are the obstacles that are preventing me from moving towards my goal? Or am I moving towards this goal more slowly than I would like? What are the things that are preventing me from reaching the school?

[00:13:49] Does my goal need to change? Does that need to shift or does the timeline in which I achieved the school need to change? What’s working? What’s not working? What needs to change?

And then the fifth part of goal setting is making success sustainable. Now, there are a lot of things, especially when we talk about pursuing goals and about habit formation and about how the habits and schedules and rhythms of our everyday life will either make the pursuit of what next.

[00:14:24] Easier or make it more difficult to achieve. So when we talk about the umbrella of making success sustainable, there’s a lot of things that can fall under this umbrella. But I want to talk about just three things with you today that I think are so vital and so key if we actually want to pursue and achieve our goals as military spouses. And the first one, and arguably the most important, is collaboration.

[00:14:54] Not comparison. Choosing collaboration over comparison. Comparison is the thief of our joy. It is a destroyer of progress on our goals because guys, each of us are on our own journeys. We are pursuing goals at our own pace. Especially with social media, we look around, we see friends that we’ve grown up with and they are pursuing their goals and their dreams.

[00:15:22] And they have a different pace than us. And it’s so easy to look around and see what other people are doing and compare ourselves to others. I’m not doing what so-and-so is doing, or they’re able to fit 10 things into their calendar and achieve all these goals. And I’m not able to do that. I’m only able to accomplish three things that I wanted to get done.

[00:15:46] Comparison is the thief of our joy and a destroyer of our progress because we get so focused on what’s wrong with me. Why am I not growing or accomplishing as much as someone else? Instead of focusing on what’s my journey?  What am I supposed to be doing in this season? If you have five hours a week to pursue your purpose, you’re going to grow, but you’re not going to grow at the same rate as someone who is spending 25 to 30 hours a week pursuing their purpose. So when we try to compare ourselves, first of all, we don’t know what in the world is going on in anyone else’s life. We don’t really have a full understanding of how much support they have, how many pieces of the puzzle are behind the scenes that is making it effective and working for them.

[00:16:36] So comparison is the killer of our goals. Instead, if we will focus on collaboration and saying, cheering others on helping them pursue their dreams without worrying about why we’re not growing as fast, then let all the pieces happen because we are better together. And the most important thing that you can do today is to choose collaborate.

[00:17:02] Over comparison. The second thing that is so important is that we adopt the mantra of progress, not perfection. I’m speaking to myself here because I am a recovering perfectionist, but we have to focus on the fact that we are making progress, that we are not about perfection. We can’t let ourselves get frustrated when we fall short.

[00:17:24] At that big goal because we made progress. We are farther along today than when we started. And that’s what really matters. We have to be able to celebrate small wins along the way, not just that big milestone when we actually achieve the thing we wanted to achieve. It’s about making some, celebrating the small wins along the way.

[00:17:49] And the third piece goes hand in hand with this it’s focusing on the process, not the results. Too many goal setting methods focus on achievement and results. What did I achieve? What did I accomplish? What accolade can I put beside my name? How many people did I speak to? Or how many people read my book or how many people

did I help with this problem?

But what matters is who you are becoming in the process. You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory, then with your current results. It doesn’t matter if you got those number of views on the blog post, or if you sold the number of items in your Etsy shop that you were hoping to sell that month, what your objectives are you on rather than focusing on the results?

[00:18:46] Look at where you are in the process and the direction you are headed in. Are you moving the needle? Are you showing up as the person you want to show up? Are you moving towards what matters to you? So let’s review real quick five things to help us set goals that work for our life as military spouses.

Number one, know what you want and where you’re going, so that you can set a direction. You have to set goals in a specific direction, focus your time and energy on growth and skill goals. Yes, your purpose goals can be a part of that, but they are only one part. This is about setting goals for your life as a whole, so that you live into the person you were being. Number three, ask the right questions.

[00:19:40] What do I have time for it in my schedule, what’s coming up. And what changes do I need to make so that I can make progress on my goals? Then I assess my progress. How am I doing? What’s working. What’s not working and what needs to shift so that I can keep making. And then making success sustainable, choosing collaboration over comparison, focusing on progress, not perfection and the trajectory focusing on your process and not the outcomes or the results.

[00:20:19] So what I would like to encourage you to do right now is to ask yourself where you are when it comes to setting goals for your life as a whole. Are you not setting goals at all? Because you don’t want to think about where you’re going, why you’re here, what you want to do with your life. You, you feel so overwhelmed that you’re just not setting goals at all.

[00:20:47] Or maybe you’ve set some goals, but they’re not in alignment with who you want to be there. They’re not the right goals. Or maybe you set some goals, but you’re struggling to make progress on those goals. You’re not really moving towards them or maybe you set your goals, but you’re focused on results. Why you’re not achieving a goal fast enough, or you’re comparing yourself to how other people are pursuing their goals, or you’re so focused on achievement rather than becoming.

[00:21:24] So where are you today and what is your next step? Is it to try and set a goal? Is it to set a better goal to reevaluate the goals you’ve set for yourself? Is it to evaluate your schedule and figure out what needs to change about your schedule so that you have time to pursue a goal? Maybe you just need to revisit your goals and assess your progress.

[00:21:54] What can you do to help you support you on your goal-setting journey? Maybe you need to retool your life so that you can make success sustainable. If you are struggling in any of these areas, then I would love to help you. Feel free to schedule an unstuck strategy session so that we can figure out where you’re stuck with your goals and how we can get you unstuck and making progress.

[00:22:26] You can also jump inside the milspouse purpose playbook, so that you get clarity on your purpose. You set a vision for your life and you have a direction you want to go in so that you know exactly how to set the right goals for your life. Plus you’ll learn the full step-by-step process to flexible goal setting as a military spouse in the bonus training, the milspouse goal setting masterclass.

[00:22:56] Now, if you’re not ready to do that, then what I would encourage you to do right now today is hop over to our free Facebook community. Share where you’re at today. Have you set goals, have you given up on setting goals? Are you struggling to make progress on your goals? Do you not know what goals you need to set?

[00:23:13] Just share with us where you are at, how you feel about goal setting as a military spouse. What do you want to do? And what do you want your next step to be? We can encourage and support each other in our journeys, but it all begins when we are willing to be vulnerable and step in and say, this is where I’m at. This is where I’m struggling. Can you give me some suggestions and ideas?

[00:23:34] This is why this community exists. Goal setting is actually one of my favorite things to talk about. And I love that we are entering into the end of one year and looking forward to the start of a new year, because this is my favorite time to really evaluate how far I’ve come in the last 12 months and to say, what goals did I reach?

[00:24:04] What goals did I make progress on? What processes did I learn? What new things did I step into? How did I grow? And then what do I want to do in the coming year ahead? What do I want my life to look and feel In 2022?  What goals do I want to set for myself in this year? Now, this is going to be a very interesting year because I know that we have another OCONUS (overseas) PCS coming up. We’re moving next summer.

[00:24:34] And that means that chasing my dreams, pursuing my goals, aren’t going to be easy and straightforward. There’s going to be a lot of curve balls that get thrown my way. You know, it’s impossible to predict the future, but I can say with a lot of certainty that it’s not going to go smoothly. Something is going to go wrong.

[00:24:53] There’s going to be a lot of demands on my time and schedule that get in the way of me pursuing the things that matter most to me. And the fun part about this for you is that you get to be a fly on the wall. You get to see this happen in my life in real time. I’ve never podcasted through a big move before.

[00:25:14] So we’re, we’re just gonna hop on for the ride and see where this goes. And you’ll be there for the highs and lows of an OCONUS PCS with young kiddos while I’m trying to pursue my goals and dreams. And this time I’m going to be navigating school schedules for the first time. That’s something I’ve never had to worry about before with a PCS.

[00:25:38] Why I’m telling you this right now. And what we can look forward to in the coming months together is because I want to share my journey with you in real time, so that it is encouraging you to start setting goals, to start pursuing goals. Even if life is messy, even if there are lots of obstacles in your way, the most important thing is that we are choosing to step into our story, to use our uniqueness, to make a contribution that matters.

[00:26:11] Even if that contribution feels really small right now, I know there is something inside of you, something that the world needs, something that will contribute to building a flourishing world. And I don’t want that thing to stay buried inside of you. I want you to live into your story. I want you to become who you are meant to be. I want you to live with purpose, to craft a life with purpose and to set goals that help move you towards who you were meant to be. And I hope that sharing my story with you, encourages you to take the next step in your journey. Until next week, may you live filled, fueled and full of joy.