[00:00] Do you wish you had a specific step by step framework or plan to set goals for 2024? Well, look no further in the next 20 minutes. I’m going to outline for you a very specific concrete plan and very clear steps that you can take to set and achieve your goals for 2024. Welcome to another episode of success.

[00:23] Through failure, the show for successful people. And for those who want to become successful, the only show that reveals the true nature of success. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today we’re talking about setting goals. Yes, I know you’ve heard this before, but it’s worth going over again. And I’m going to share with you some things you’ve never heard before about how to go about setting goals, how to actually make them work for you.

[00:47] And we’re going to break this down in a pretty short podcast episode, but I’m going to give you sort of the blueprint that we’re going to be using to actually do run a workshop at the end of the month, at the end of December, December 29th, 2023, that is going to actually help you implement all of this, right?

[01:05] There’s one thing to know the information, right? We all know that. We can find the information on how to lift weights or how to train for a marathon or to do any sport. You can find that stuff on YouTube, et cetera, but without a coach, actually a program to actually walk you through and guide you through it.

[01:22] It’s just more information. So I don’t want that to be just this for you. This is going to be great information for you. You’re going to get a ton out of this. I really, really want you to take action on this and you can go to jimharshawjr.com/GSWS that stands for goal setting work session. All right.

[01:41] Or goal setting workshop. If that’s easier to remember goal setting workshop, and that takes place at the end of December. We’re going to be doing this together, actually doing this. And you’re going to get a tool that is reserved only for my clients. I’m going to make this publicly available to you also as a listener for free.

[01:59] Just go to jimharshawjr.com/action to get this tool. I’m going to talk about this tool here in a bit, but let me first give you an overview of what to expect in this episode. Just very quickly, four things. Number one, the value of setting goals, like the why behind this, we all. Kind of know that we should, but I mean, really what is behind the Y of setting goals?

[02:19] I’m going to give you some examples of why this is very specifically examples that you can relate to of why this is important and how it’s worked for you in the past. Even if you think it hasn’t, I’m going to tell you how to set the goals. I’m going to give you the categories in which you need to set the goals and then how to actually follow through and make this stuff stick.

[02:36] That’s the magic potion here. The pixie dust that we’re going to sprinkle on this at the end to make this actually work for you. So you can be consistent and focused and disciplined. Long term on these goals, because you know, there’s going to be winds of change or even, you know, just kind of getting bored or, or, or dealing with adversity or setbacks that, that push you off of your own path.

[02:57] We’re not going to let that happen. All right. So let’s get into the first part here, the first topic, and that’s why, like, what is the value of setting goals? Well, I’m recording this right now. And it’s. Early December, the college football playoffs just got announced and, you know, the NFL playoffs are right around the corner and if you think about any of these teams Do you think they had a very clear and specific goal?

[03:22] Of course they did, right? Of course, they had a very clear, very specific goal in sports and athletics. It’s very clear to us what the goal is, right? It’s top of the podium, holding the trophy, winning the championship. That is so crystal clear. That is not the case out here in the real world. Success can look in like a lot of different things.

[03:44] It can look like what’s parked in your neighbor’s driveway. It can look like what you see on social media, or it can actually look like that thing that you deeply, truly want that life that you actually want, which is. Probably different than your neighbors and different than what you’re seeing on social media and different with the mass media tells you that you should want, but we have to have that crystal clear vision and that’s not always readily available outside of say sports.

[04:11] For example. When you have that crystal clear vision, you become more resilient. You become more consistent. You stay focused. You’re able to stay on track in the longterm with your goals, where maybe in the past you’ve, you’ve fallen off track. Maybe you’ve stuck with it for a few weeks of a month, a few months, six months, and then eventually.

[04:32] You get sidetracked and you drift off and you get shiny object syndrome. And, and eventually you, you, you find yourself off the path, to use the analogy of my coaching program off the path. It’s called reveal your path. Um, but if you end up off the path in sort of bushwhacking and, um, you’ve lost your way, but maybe, you know, where the path is and know how to get back to it.

[04:53] But most of the time people. Don’t, and we help them really find that absolute clarity and what that right path is. That’s not just what the vision is for their life, but also the habits and the routines that help them live their life the way they want to and continue to make progress towards that life that they, that they want.

[05:13] All right. So the reason why this all came up. It’s because I was watching the college football playoffs get announced and the NFL playoffs come around the corner and thinking to myself, man, this is the time of year where you, the listener need to hear this. You need to understand very clearly why you need to set this goal so that a year from now, when you’re listening to this podcast, you can say.

[05:34] Yep. I did this last year. I’m in a totally different place in my life. You can accomplish so much in 12 months in this episode is setting you up for that success. And then this goal setting work session, it’s two hours at the end of the month is going to really help you put, make the rubber meet the road.

[05:51] Quick interruption. If you like what you’re hearing here and you want to learn how you can implement this. Into your life, just go to jimharshawjr.com/apply to see how you can get a free one on one coaching session with me. That’s jimharshawjr.com/apply now back to the show. So that’s number one.

[06:11] I told you, there are four things. Number one is the value, why you should be setting these goals. You’re not going to get there wherever there is without very clearly defined goals. Now here’s number two. The problem is most people just start setting goals without understanding what they should align their goals with.

[06:30] And they start, like I said, aligning their goals with what’s parked in their neighbor’s driveway or what they see on social media or the mass media tells them that they should want instead of really going deep, looking inward and figuring out what is the vision for my life. What should my workday look like in my perfect ideal life?

[06:48] What does my workday look like? Maybe it’s working for the same company. Maybe it’s working for a totally different company. Maybe it’s working for yourself, but what does it look like? Who are the type of people you’re working with? What are the type of projects you’re working on? Are you in an office?

[07:01] Are you out and about? Are you moving? Are you in a job where you eat what you kill? Like in sales or an entrepreneur, or are you in a more stable, steady, you know, employee type role, or are you in a leadership role? I mean, whatever that is. You first have to figure that out. This is the how, this is the how behind setting the goals.

[07:20] First, you have to figure out what does my life look like that, that ideal life, that miracle life, what does that look like? Script that out. And once you do, you’re going to have clarity around how to go about setting your goals. So how do you, how do you do this? How do you figure out what that vision is for your life?

[07:39] How do you figure out what the core values that underlie who you really are and what drive you? How do you reveal those? How do you discover those? Now? I know a lot of people go to seminars or workshops and, you know, the leader of the workshop might say, okay, here’s a list of core value words. There’s 200 words, circle the 20 words that sound the best to you.

[08:01] Right. And everybody circles integrity because they want integrity. And, you know, but it’s like, nobody really is doing the deep work, right? They’re saying circle 20 words. Okay. Now you circled 20. Cross off 10. Okay. Now you’re down to 10. Okay. Cross off five more. Okay. Now you’re down to five. Those are your core values.

[08:18] Guess what? Nobody remembers that 24 hours later, nobody remembers their core values 24 hours later, because you’ve not done the deep work to really peel back the layers of what’s important to me. What drives me? What is, what does my life look like? What does it feel like? What is it that experience in my life when I’ve achieved?

[08:38] These goals that I want to set. I don’t even know what the goals are. We can’t go there yet, but it’s like, what, what is it that I really want in my life? And then you reverse engineer the goals in order to achieve that. Okay. My clients pathfinders, we call them because of the programs, like I said, reveal your path.

[08:54] If you ask any of the, if you walked up to any of them on the street right now today and said, what are your core values? Boom. They could tell you on the spot. They know what they are. We’ve created a very specific process that allows them to number one, do the deep foundational work that’s required to actually reveal true core values and a vision for your life.

[09:16] So there’s actual effort put into this, not circle words on a page, but actual real effort that goes into this. And then we help them create a tool to memorize this so they remember it. And now you can use this to make decisions in your life. It makes decision making. Easier. It makes it simpler, right?

[09:33] It’s not easy necessarily to do some of this, but actually it is simpler. And if you can simplify your life, simplified decision making, whether it’s the small decisions, like, should I eat that donut that’s in the break room or the big decisions? Like, do I sell my house, quit my job and move across the country and all the decisions in between that really dictate your life.

[09:53] Like when people talk about. Feeling out of balance, feeling out of harmony, out of alignment in their life. It’s because they really don’t know who they are, what they stand for, have that absolute clarity on what their core values are and what their vision is for life. When you have that. You can set goals and make choices that align with that and move you down the path that you want to move down in your life.

[10:18] All right. So the, how is really based upon the creating the vision, understanding your core values, and you can do that. I’m going to give you just a very high level view of how we do that in the program, and you can kind of extrapolate a little bit and do some of this work on your own, if you’d like. And.

[10:34] One of the things that we do is we, we have them define, like I said earlier, that, that ideal day, what is it in that ideal day? What does it look like? What does it feel like? What are your experiences? And then extrapolating from that, what does this tell me about me? Um, another one is what we call the funeral exercise.

[10:51] I’ve not, I didn’t invent this, but we have our own version of this. Um, where, you know, what, what do you want people to say? At your funeral. What do you want them to say? Now, here’s a little twist. What would they say now? What And is there a difference between what you would want them to say and actually what they would say today, if, if it was your funeral, and is there a difference that, that tells us where you may be out of alignment and out of harmony.

[11:18] All right. So, so these are some of the exercises that we do. And that’s some of the things that you really need to think about. If you’re good, want to do this exercise on your own to figure out how do you go about setting the right goals? Okay. So that’s the how, right? How you do it. And sort of the second part of the how is.

[11:32] The categories. Okay. I told you there were four parts to what I wanted to talk to you about today. The first one being the value of setting goals and the Y and second one is the how, and the third one is what categories is kind of part two of the how, and the categories are this relationships, self health and wealth, all right, relationships, self explanatory self, probably not self explanatory.

[11:56] So let me tell you about this. Think growth. Impact or fun growth, impact or fun growth, meaning a professional growth, personal growth, some kind of challenge you want to do, or a new certification you want to get, or could be some books you want to read growth, right? Impact would be volunteering or philanthropy and impact impact that you want to make on the world.

[12:21] And then the last one is simply fun. What are the things that I used to do in my life that were fun that I don’t do anymore? Or what would be fun for me in my life? This is the category of self goals. Most people miss this. This is a really, really important area for setting goals that most people just don’t do.

[12:41] They skip over and they go straight to the next one, which is health goals. Health, you know, that’s wellbeing, physical, psychological, mental health, as well as physical health and wellbeing, right? Health goals. And the last one, wealth goals needs a little explanation because it’s not just money. It’s actually career business and finance.

[13:01] Financial goals. All right. So that’s your wealth goals. This is your career, your job, your occupation, but also your finances. That’s the wealth goal. Those are the four categories. Now, depending on the research you read anywhere from three to eight goals is what they say is the right number of goals, depending on the research.

[13:19] Like I said, that you read, we set at least one goal in each of these areas. So you have a minimum of four goals. Maximum of eight goals. Okay. Four to eight goals is what you want to have. And let me tell you that setting goals in these areas is going to be more important than anything else that you do over the next year.

[13:40] So if you actually do this kind of work, then it’s going to be more important than anything else that you do over the next 12 months. Why do I say that? You’re like, wow, Jim, what about the time I spend in church? That’s more important than setting goals. What about the time I spend with my family? What about the time I spend working out or, working on that big sales presentation?

[14:00] That’s gonna, you know, help me hit a home run and make tons of money next year. Spending the time to set the goals in these areas is going to be more important because all of that stuff that you want to accomplish is going to be more likely to happen because. You’re sitting down setting the goals in these categories and hopefully doing it with us on December 29th in that two hour goal setting work session, any relationship goals, you have self goals, health goals, wealth goals.

[14:24] All of that stuff is going to happen because we’re going to help you identify that goal and then build the habits and routines and put those things in place so that those things are more achievable. That doesn’t happen just by showing up on January 1st and saying, okay, let me set some resolutions and, um, kind of wing it this year.

[14:41] Not going to work, not going to happen. All right. So these four categories, I’ve done tons of research on the right categories for setting goals. And this is it. These are the four areas. Now relationships, health, sort of business, career, wealth are fairly common, but this self goal is a little bit of a differentiator there where we’re really focusing on growth and impact and fun.

[15:04] You might say there should be something in there about spiritual growth. Um, that’s where the relationship that’s could be a relationship. Goal for those of you like myself who are Christians or any religion, that’s where your spirituality goal would be going in the relationships, or maybe the self category of your goals.

[15:20] Okay. Relationship with God, for example. All right. So those are the categories, relationships, self health and wealth. And now last but not least. Actually, I should say last, but most important follow through following through all of this is great work to have done, but if you just put it up on a shelf or, or you, you fall off track, fall off the path, you know, a week, a month, a few months down the road, all of this is for not.

[15:47] And you say, ah, goal setting doesn’t work for me. No, you have to have a plan to follow through. One of the things I was doing before I recorded this episode was setting. What I call my micro goals and all of my clients do this. We do this, the first Monday of the month. Some people do it on the very first day of the month, but we set micro goals.

[16:05] And when you set these micro goals, it gives you clarity over the next 30 days. Over the next month. What do I need to execute upon in order to achieve that six months, 12 months, 18 months, longer term goal, what do I need to do in the next 30 days? Okay. Well, I can’t make a million dollars. I can’t maybe get that promotion.

[16:24] I can’t run that marathon this month. But I can, I can buy new running shoes. I can read that book that is going to help me create that even better sales presentation. I can take action and, and, and have a, schedule a date night with my spouse so we can improve my relationship there. Those are the micro goals, the things that you can do here and now to move you towards those larger goals.

[16:48] Now, again, in the action plan, I’m going to give you a tool. This is the exact tool that my clients use. In the reveal your path program that I’m making available for the first time to you. It’s an incredible tool. There’s a scoring system in there where you can score your goals, track your progress, see your progress in sort of a visual fashion, right?

[17:10] That it’s color coded. As you go through the months and start scoring yourself, it’s color coded. you will get a numerical score, just like you get grades in school. You will get, you’ll be grading yourself through the process, through the, over the course of the year, and you will. Be able to see what you’ve accomplished, or you’ll be able to see where you’re off track.

[17:27] This is a fantastic tool. My clients love it. We actually just created, this is this past year, 2023 is the first year we’ve actually used this tool and rolled it out about a year ago. And people just loved it. We’re making some improvements to it right now. So you’re going to get access to that in the action plan, as well as in the goal setting work session.

[17:46] So you have to have this tool. You also need a process to follow through in the sense that you need a reminder. All right. So I have a recurring calendar event on my calendar. First Monday of the month, every month from here until infinity, that sends me an email and that email has a link to my goal setting worksheet, my spreadsheet for, for setting my goals, where I track my goals using that tool.

[18:12] And it makes it very easy. It reduces the friction. I don’t really have to break the flow and, or, or do anything hard, log into something or, go anywhere or do anything hard to actually open this goal setting sheet. I it’s, it’s there. It’s in my inbox. I click on it. I open it and it makes it very easy for me to score last month’s goals, set next month’s goals.

[18:34] All right. So you need to process a system, a framework and infrastructure that allows you to follow through. And the other thing you must have is accountability. Accountability. Now, in my community of pathfinders, we did something we’ve, this is the second year in a row. We, we do a challenge in the month of October and we call it on the path, October.

[18:55] Now you’ve heard of challenges out there before 75 hard whole 30 exodus 90. You’ve heard of these challenges. What about a challenge that is actually specifically designed for you? Not one that’s designed for the masses, but one that’s designed for you specifically. And when you do this, you create a challenge that is full of the things that you need.

[19:16] And what we did is we had all of our clients create a challenge. And then we tracked it and we scored it and there was a leaderboard and we gamified it. And so there was accountability. There was public accountability to follow through on doing your challenge, all the items in your challenge every day.

[19:31] It might be meditation or planning your day in advance might be working out. It might be whatever habit, reading, drinking a certain amount of water, whatever those habits that you are, that you determined that my clients determined. They were tracked, they were scored, there was accountability. Everybody else knew if you did them or didn’t do them, you have to welcome accountability.

[19:52] As an athlete, when I was wrestling, there was built in accountability. It helped me do really, really hard things as a college wrestler. You need that same accountability in your life. You have to welcome it. And that’s built into the infrastructure of our program, of course, but this is something you need on your own.

[20:10] Okay. So I told you, I was going to give you four topics around setting goals for 2024. And I gave you those four, number one, the value and why behind setting goals. Number two, The how, how to set goals, number three, the different categories and number four, how to actually follow through giving you a tool and it gave you a process for this.

[20:29] Now, if you want to do this with us, December 29th, you have to register now. jimharshawjr.com/GSWS that stands for goal setting work session. It’s going to be a limited availability. So grab your spot. It’s a, it’s an incredible experience. We’ve done this for several years now. It’s just a transformative experience and a way to kick off the new year.

[20:51] So I look forward to talking to then don’t let the end of this episode be the end of your goal setting for 2024. This is just the beginning. Take action. Good luck. Thanks for listening. If you want to apply these principles into your life. Let’s talk. You can see the limited spaces that are open on my calendar at jimharshawjr.com/apply, where you can sign up for a free one time coaching call directly with me. And don’t forget to grab your action plan. Just go to jimharshawjr.com/action. And lastly, iTunes tends to suggest podcasts with more ratings and reviews more often. You would totally make my day. If you give me a rating and review, those go a long way in helping me grow the podcast audience.

[21:37] Just open up your podcast app. If you have an iPhone, do a search for success through failure, select it, and then scroll the whole way to the bottom where you can leave the podcast, a rating and a review. Now, I hope this isn’t just another podcast episode for you. I hope you take action on what you learned here today.

[21:55] Good luck and thanks for listening.

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