[Podcast 23]: Why We Need to Reconsider How We Set Goals–with Jon Acuff and April and Eric Perry

I (April) adored Jon Acuff’s most recent book, Finish. He’s funny. And clever. And as I read his stories and thought about my own goals (and sometimes-ridiculous expectations for myself), I noticed a shift in mindset. Goals don’t have to be hard. We don’t have to expect ourselves to be superhuman. We can achieve substantial results by looking at our progress with a healthy perspective. We’ve provided some key takeaways from the podcast–below–and we hope these ideas will be helpful to you as you plan for 2018!

Podcast Takeaways

• Goals don’t need to be miserable for it to ‘count’ and it’s important to be deliberate about making a goal fun.
• When making it fun, consider measuring both satisfaction and performance.   How we feel and how we do can both be powerful ways to weigh in as we are meeting our goals. In Jon’s words “You have to raise both…if I only raise satisfaction but not performance you’re smiling all the way to last place. But if I only raise performance but not satisfaction I’m every miserable successful person you’ve ever met.”
• Give yourself (and others) permission to change and don’t hold yourself to other’s standards. (Example: rollerblading vs running)
• Say ‘No’ to shame.  Thoughts like: “I should be able to handle all of this” are toxic – and moms especially carry a lot of unnecessary guilt.
• Don’t treat December like June. Some seasons are busier than others.  It’s important to acknowledge  that it is not realistic to add things into an already full schedule: “In order to serve these customers, I won’t serve these other customers.”
• Beware of hiding places.  An example of a hiding place is something that we do naturally.  We don’t gravitate toward choices that shape us (“I sat down to watch Stranger Things and ended up doing burpees!”) and therefore we have to be deliberate in our decisions.
• Sometimes we fall into a trap of a ‘noble obstacle.’ This looks productive on the outside but is really a hiding place.
• Everyone needs a ‘side thing.’
• Consider how the Candle Effect can relate to goal setting:  “When you light a candle in a pitch black room without windows, the effects are dramatic. Going from complete dark to light is substantial progress. The difference is obvious and immediately felt. Lighting a second candle has a big effect too albeit not as big, the third candle is impressive but not as impressive and this diminishing continues until the effect of a new candle is hardly noticed, the 15th candle would barely register on your brightness scale.”
• We tend to measure: motivation, results, and effort – but effort is the only thing we can control. We can’t control results.
• Data beats denial: Data helps you see where you are headed and can be measured.  So don’t quit based on results!
• Day Before Done: Awareness is a gift. Discovering obstacles thrown up towards the end can actually serve us. We can remove fear that we have and truly finish.

Show Notes

 

Life Architecture and Best Year Ever