Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to make sure you know exactly what success
Speaker 1: will look like. How will you know exactly if you
Speaker 1: have achieved your goal? By being specific about knowing when
Speaker 1: you have one, as it were, you will be able
Speaker 1: to take the actions that will help you get there. So,
Speaker 1: this is a time of year when a lot of
Speaker 1: people are working toward goals or New Year's resolutions. For instance,
Speaker 1: you may have decided to declutter your house, or revamp
Speaker 1: your wardrobe, or repair a broken relationship with your brother.
Speaker 1: You may have other goals related to work or health,
Speaker 1: or relationships, hobbies or something else. I love goals, But
Speaker 1: one of the reasons people have trouble with resolutions is
Speaker 1: that it is often hard to know if you have succeeded.
Speaker 1: What exactly is a decluttered home? How will you know
Speaker 1: if your home is officially decluttered. How will you know
Speaker 1: if you have gotten in shape or are in a
Speaker 1: better place with a relationship? What exactly will success look like? Now,
Speaker 1: for some things there is a lot of natural ambiguity,
Speaker 1: but even so, it might help to visualize what success means,
Speaker 1: and set some sort of metric that you will be
Speaker 1: able to work toward achieving. You want to know when
Speaker 1: you have crossed the fetish line. Sometimes people like to
Speaker 1: motivate themselves with visions of a changed life. A decluttered
Speaker 1: home means you have calm mornings when you know where
Speaker 1: your keys are on days you work from home, you
Speaker 1: don't have to blur your background to hide the mess.
Speaker 1: Those can definitely be motivating goals, but even within that,
Speaker 1: I would suggest making a more concrete list of steps
Speaker 1: you can take that will then allow you to declare
Speaker 1: victory when you have done them. For instance, maybe you
Speaker 1: make a list of thirty spots in your house that
Speaker 1: you would like to see addressed. These could be quite granular.
Speaker 1: Each closet is a different item on the list, each bathroom,
Speaker 1: each shelf or drawer, even in a particularly cluttered area.
Speaker 1: When you have addressed each of these in turn and
Speaker 1: remove things that are unnecessary and have put back things
Speaker 1: where they belong, then you can declare victory your house
Speaker 1: is decluttered. As for getting in shape, another popular resolution,
Speaker 1: maybe this means going to the gym three times per
Speaker 1: week when you are home and you aren't sick, or
Speaker 1: maybe this is a specific goal like being able to
Speaker 1: run a five k or lift a certain amount of weight.
Speaker 1: All of these can work. If you make it to
Speaker 1: the gym on average three times a week during the
Speaker 1: forty five weeks of the year you are around, then
Speaker 1: you know that you have succeeded. If you run that
Speaker 1: five k without stopping, you have won at your goal.
Speaker 1: You know what success looks like, and you can work
Speaker 1: toward that now. Some goals, like repairing a relationship are
Speaker 1: clearly a little less obvious. What does success mean when
Speaker 1: it comes to feeling closer to friends or family members?
Speaker 1: But I believe that if you put some thought into it,
Speaker 1: you could still brainstorm some potential metrics. Maybe you decide
Speaker 1: to reach out in low key ways at least six
Speaker 1: times over the next two months. If you start getting
Speaker 1: civil or even friendly responses, you have succeeded. Or maybe
Speaker 1: success is getting together once, even if it's a bit
Speaker 1: of a frosty get together. Hey, it's a start. Having
Speaker 1: a vision of what you are working toward lets you
Speaker 1: know what actions you need to take. A resolution stops
Speaker 1: being some vague and unlikely thing and starts being a
Speaker 1: bit more like something you can put on a to
Speaker 1: do list and do that concrete sense of what the
Speaker 1: finish line looks like just may be the thing that
Speaker 1: gets you going. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.