Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Remarkable Women Leaders annual conference, and it was just the recharge I needed to start this new year strong. I could probably write 10 blog posts about all of the lessons I learned at this conference, but one moment sticks out in particular.

You may recall a previous post in which I said a good way to enhance a SMART goal is to make it a stretch goal. I certainly believe there is a lot of truth to that, but I am happy to say I learned yet another way to enhance your current system for setting and achieving goals.

One of the founders of Remarkable Women Leaders and lead speakers at this conference was Kris Taylor. Kris is also the founder of Evergreen Leadership and co-founder of LEAP Consulting; she shared many of her personal and professional experiences, including all the times she has reinvented herself and taken a leap.

In one session toward the end of the day, she led us through an activity in which we created a SMART goal, but first we connected it to what she calls a HEART goal (you can see her original blog post about this here!).

Here is the meat of a HEART goal:

H: Holistic

E: Enduring

A: Aspirational

R: Really Matter

T: Timeless

For example, one of my SMART goals last week was to get back into blogging…you may have noticed I took a *several* week break there…my apologies.

But that’s something I have been thinking about for quite a while, so clearly I needed something else to get me back on track. Simply setting a deadline had not been good enough.

The idea is that a SMART goal is at its very best when it is related to something truly meaningful for you. When I took the time to connect that goal to something bigger, it finally clicked.

Writing this blog does really matter to me; I am proud anytime someone tells me they read it, or shared it with someone else. Most importantly, I really appreciate having an outlet for my ideas so that I can re-imagine them, articulate them, and use them directly in my work.

So it’s safe to say that it worked! Here I am blogging again. Within two days after the conference I had five ideas for new posts to write, all because I took the time to dig a little deeper, and think a little bigger.

And on that note, I leave you with this final thought:

When you put your SMART goal into a greater context, does it help get you closer to something really meaningful for you?

I’m sorry in advance. The title of this post is a bad pun.

On second thought, I’m not sorry – puns are the best!

But like the title says, this one is all about nail biting; or rather the fact that I didn’t bite my nails for 11 years…until I did again.

So what happened?

To start, growing up I bit my nails all the time. And I mean, ALL the time. It was such a bad habit, and despite everyone in my family’s best efforts, I stuck with it for many years. 20 to be exact.

In junior high and high school I tried just about everything to stop; I tried painting my nails, using that really bad tasting nail polish, and so many other tips and tricks. At one point I even Googled getting hypnotized as a way to stop. But alas, I feared nothing would work.

That is, until I turned 20. This was the age when I decided I wanted to find an internship in my senior year of college. I figured that short, bitten nails wouldn’t look very good in an interview or in an office for that matter, so I decided to stop once and for all. And you know what? I stopped. Completely. For 11 years.

Honestly, it wasn’t even that hard. Once the time was right and I had the right motivation, it just clicked.

Side note: some folks think that I stopped because this was also the age that I started dating my future husband, Nick, but that’s just so not the case. I had never changed my physical appearance for a guy at that point and I certainly wasn’t going to start then (and haven’t started since, thank you very much!). 

But it was the internship. This was my first realization that for me personally, professional goals would be a major influence on whether or not I would achieve a goal.

Fast forward 11 years later, and the exact thing that motivated me to stop biting my nails motivated me to start biting again: my job.

The last few months at work have been more stressful, busy, and challenging than at any other point in my career. I love what I do and I’m not complaining at all – but at times it was (and is) a lot to manage.

So little by little, the biting came back. First just one finger, then just a couple more, until eventually I was full blown junior high Liz all over again.

But I have to say I am really pleased with how I handled it. I didn’t get too down on myself and I took it one day at a time. Most importantly, I never considered myself a nail biter again. Instead, I said to myself that I had fallen off the wagon and that I needed to make a strategy to get back on. I believed that this was just one setback in a lifetime of *mostly* not biting my nails.

I quickly realized that I would soon have my annual mani/pedi with my mother-in-law, our Thanksgiving tradition. That was just a few weeks ago, but so far, it looks like that’s all I needed to get back on track.

That, and perhaps some new coping mechanisms for the rest of this semester at work :).

And on that note, a thought experiment:

When is a time you “fell off the horse” and were able to get back on? What was your motivation?

This is the third and final post in my before, during, and after the goal series. So at this point, once you have created an effective goal, and persevered throughout your goal achievement process, you have finally made it to the end.

So what happened? Did you achieve the goal, or did you fail?

Of course, everyone has done both of those things. Therefore, my advice in this blog post will be broken down by whether or not you achieved the goal, because either way, there is plenty to do.

Let’s start with the more likeable option:

You achieved your goal!

What will you do next?

My advice is to first take time to celebrate. Hopefully you have thought through some possible rewards that you could give to yourself, but if not, now is the time to do so. You worked hard, and you deserve to treat yourself.

But once the partying is done, it’s time to get to work again. Because if you successfully completed a goal, you may want to capitalize on that momentum. So to do this effectively, take time to consider what went well, what worked, and what didn’t work. That way, you can immediately begin working on your next crowning achievement.

To summarize, if you achieved your goal, your next steps may sound like this:

1. Say yay, I did it!!!
2. Ask yourself: what’s next?

Alrighty, now it’s time to talk about the less likeable option.

You failed at your goal 🙁

Personally, when I fail to achieve a goal, I like to reserve a little time to wallow in self pity. Nothing too intense of course; just a handful of oreos or a quick 5 episodes of Frasier on Netflix…you know, the usual stuff. But then, it’s time to get back to work.

First, take the time to analyze why you weren’t successful. Was the goal too much of a reach, or too easy? Was it your system, steps, or timeline? Taking a moment to understand these details will help immensely once you begin the next goal.

Secondly, consider your motivation. Is it still the same as it was when you began your goal? If not, perhaps this goal is not even worth your time and effort. But if your motivations are still present, then there is only one thing to do…

TRY AGAIN!!!

Instead of considering this a failed goal, consider it a first attempt. For your second attempt, what will be different? How will you ensure that you will be successful? Remember: This was not a waste of time if you learned something.

To summarize, if you failed to achieve your goal, your steps may sound like this:

1. Briefly wallow.
2. Determine where it went wrong.
3. Ask yourself: do I even still care about this?
4. Either try again, or make a new goal – but either way, determine what will be different.

So there you have it. Some easy, yet critical steps for the ending of any goal. And as always, I leave you with this thought experiment:

What do you typically do after finishing a goal?

As we talked about in last week’s blog post, there are key things to do before, during, and after a goal. Today’s post is going to be all about what to do DURING the goal. That is, how to maintain, reevaluate, and reward yourself along the way.

To make sure you achieve the goal you created, follow these steps:

#1: Consider your original motivation.

To say that achieving a goal can be difficult is the understatement of the century. Goals can be REALLY. FREAKING. HARD.

So how are you going to stay motivated when things get tough?

One quick way to do this is to revisit your original motivation. Hopefully you have written it down somewhere, whether that is a list of your values, a mind map of what your future will look like, or your favorite quote or personal mantra. Make sure you have something tangible you can see that can give you the energy you need to continue.

Let’s use the metaphor of running a marathon. When you are halfway through, you have run 13.1 miles – that’s pretty amazing! But…you still have 13.1 miles to go. What is going to give you the energy you need to persist?

#2: Get back on the horse.

Inevitably, we all fall off the horse sometimes. What’s more important is how you get back on.

For example, let’s say you have a healthy eating goal, and one day you eat half a bag of marshmallows. The regular sized ones, not minis. This is obviously made up and not at all my own story. Obviously. It’s just that sometimes when people buy marshmallows for s’mores there are always a ton leftover that just sit in the pantry, just waiting to be eaten. Again, this is what I have been told…I don’t know this from personal experience. Obviously. But moving on…

Let’s say this happens. Should that mean that immediately after the marshmallow binge that the health goal is a failure? Of course not!

I know from my own personal experience that when this happens my gut reaction is to say to myself, “well that was fun while it lasted…I guess this goal is over”. But what if instead I said, “That happened, and now I better get back on track, starting right now”? That would be pretty amazing.

Consider Mount Everest:

If the peak is when you have successfully completed your goal, it’s not possible to get there on the first try. In fact, it takes about two months to successfully summit it. Climbers must acclimate to the atmosphere the higher they go, so they go up, and come back down, and go up again, over and over until they reach the top.

But you better believe that once they are there they turn around to see how far they have come.

So why don’t we do this with our goals? If we consider every set back to be a valley of the entire mountain range, it makes perfect sense that it will take several attempts to finally reach the summit.

If you are more of a numbers person than an outdoorsy person, consider a profit graph:

The same principle applies. No company has a perfect straight line going upward indefinitely. There are periods of upward growth, and brief periods of the opposite. The most important thing is an overall trend moving in the right direction over a long period of time.

So when you have a set back, do yourself a favor and give yourself a break, and get back on the horse.  

#3: Reassess the goal.

Additionally, in the middle stages of a goal, it’s a great idea to assess the goal itself. Take a moment to consider if the goal is too much of a reach, or if it is too easy. There is nothing wrong with changing the goal halfway through if you are re-calibrating it to make it achievable or to push you even further.

Or perhaps the goal is just fine, but your process needs reassessing. Are the systems you have in place still working for you? If not, what might need to change for the remainder of the goal?

An easy way to do all of this is to do a stop, start, continue activity, which I talked about in the last post. It’s a great tool to help create the goal, and is equally helpful for considering your next steps for completing the goal.

#4: Reward yourself.

Finally, be sure to treat yourself!

The end of the goal hopefully has a significant internal and/or external reward waiting for you, but it can be helpful to have smaller rewards along the way to keep you motivated.

The main thing is to make sure that the reward is something that will give you positive reinforcement to continue working on the goal. In other words, don’t reward yourself with the thing you are supposed to be giving up.

For example, a bag of marshmallows should not be your reward if you have a healthy eating goal. Instead, eating a few marshmallows at strategic and intentional times as part of your system for achieving your goal would be much more effective. Then, perhaps the goal would be something that would continue to encourage the healthy habits you are creating, such as spending money on a new health app, a fitness tracker device, new clothes, etc.

So there you have it! 4 easy ways to ensure you stay on track when it comes to your big goals.

But worry not, I also leave you with this:

Consider a big goal you achieved. How did you stay motivated?

What rewards would help you work even harder on your goals?

What is an example of a goal that you should have reassessed?

Any good goal comes in three parts:

1. What you do BEFORE the goal
2. What you do DURING the goal
3. What you do AFTER the goal

Since there is so much fun stuff to talk about related to these parts, the next few blog posts are going to be part of a series explaining each of those more in depth.

So to start us off, what are some of the steps we should take BEFORE we start a goal?

In all of the research I have done, and in my own personal experiences, it is clear to see that vast majority of the work needs to take place in this very first part.

In order to start a goal, we must first have a good understanding of not only what is important to us, but why it is important to us as well.

So to help you do that, here are two ways to choose what your goal is going to be:

1. Do a “Stop, Start, Continue”.

If you are not quite sure where to start, this activity can work wonders. I originally learned about it from a former boss, and she learned it along the way from someone else.

The premise is pretty simple; all you do is ask yourself three questions:

1. What would I like to START doing that I am not currently doing?
2. What am I doing that I would like to STOP doing?
3. What am I doing well or enjoying that I would like to CONTINUE doing?

You can change this activity slightly based on the situation as well. For example, you could consider these questions focusing on work, or your personal life, your health, finances, etc. There is no right or wrong way to do this.

Afterward, you may have a general idea of what your goal may be. Once you have that, you can move on to the second way to help choose your goal:

2. Ask yourself “Why?” five times.

Choosing the goal is not quite enough; you must also have a firm grasp on why it is important to you. This is essential because if and when things get difficult, it helps to have a solid reasoning to fall back on for why you started this goal in the first place.

Additionally, this activity is a good idea because you can make sure the goal is something that is even worth doing for you before you spend too much time, energy, or money on it.

Doing this is pretty simple. Consider your goal, and ask yourself why it is important roughly five times (or however many times it takes) to get somewhere deeper and more meaningful.

For example, one of my work goals is to submit an article to a publication that I have never written for before. It’s something that I have had on my mind for several months, but I have not done any work to get this goal started, so I figured doing this activity to connect it to a deeper motivation may be helpful.

So here we go:

Liz: I want to submit an article to a new publication.

Why #1: Why is this important to you?

Liz: Because I like to challenge myself to do new things.

Why #2: Why is this important to you?

Liz: Because I like to be constantly gaining a new skill or experience.

Why #3: Why is this important to you?

Liz: Because I don’t want to feel stale, and I like the idea of being able to reinvent myself if needed.

Why #4: Why is this important to you?

Liz: Because when it comes to work especially, the people that have influenced me the most (my parents and my Grandpa Art to name a few) all had or have a strong work ethic, curiosity, and a desire to take on new challenges.

Why #5: Why is this important to you?

Liz: Because I want to be a similar role model for my daughters.

I have to say, before doing this activity, I would not have guessed that a project like writing an article would somehow connect to being a mom, but it does.

By doing this I can see what is important to me most of all: to choose goals that will help me be the kind of role model and mom that I want to be. Perhaps writing the article is one way to do that, or perhaps I should focus on something else. But the point is, I know which general direction I should be heading.

So there you have it! Two simple activities to get you started. But before you run off to try these for yourself, consider this:

How much time do you typically spend in the BEFORE the goal stage? Is it enough?

If you remember nothing else from this blog post, remember this:

Be a baby.

Now, I am not insinuating that we retreat back to someone changing our diapers and being totally helpless creatures. But I do think that we can learn a lot from babies when it comes to setting, achieving, and failing at our goals.

Take walking for example. According to a 2012 study, infants aged 12-19 months fell on average 17 times per hour while learning to walk. Imagine you are setting out to learn a new skill, or achieve a goal, and you failed 17 times in a row, every hour, all day.

Would you keep going?

Understandably, the answer to that is most likely no. And yet, we all started the same way; learning to walk, falling hundreds, if not thousands of times before we got it right.

The same goes for learning to drink from a cup, learning to put on our clothes, learning to use the potty…literally every time we learned a new skill, we first had to fail over, and over, and over.

And yet, we kept going.

So what changed? Perhaps we got tired, lost our motivation, or lost track of that unbridled joy that is so characteristic of a baby, even when failing. But in my opinion, it’s not too late to get it back.

I have been thinking about this post for a while, so I spent the last several weeks observing my daughters in a new light. They are almost 2 ½ years old now, and to watch them approach a new situation is fascinating.

It happens in one of two ways:

They either approach cautiously, taking ample time to observe the situation first, and asking for support if needed:

Or they jump in enthusiastically without really giving it much thought at all:

Whichever way you approach a new experience, the bottom line is they always end up entering the situation with everything they’ve got. And no matter what, every time, they are thrilled with the results.

We do such a good job of making sure our children have new experiences as often as possible. But do we regularly give ourselves the same opportunities? When was the last time we intentionally gave ourselves a variety of new experiences, and approached them with pure joy and curiosity?

I don’t know about you, but I am ready to get out there and fail, try again, and learn something new along the way.

And as always, I leave you with this:

How can you find something new to learn, just for the sheer joy of it?

In my first Year of Liz update post, I briefly mentioned that one thing I might try regarding my health goal is yoga. I started by doing my usual multi-step process before beginning any goal: I did research, talked with a friend who is an expert, reflected on it, thought about the pros and cons, and yadda yadda yadda, I began a 30 day yoga challenge.

*Side note – perhaps I overthink these things…but then again, I do love my thought experiments…*

This goal hit all of the points that have led me to success before: it was something new, it had a specific deadline, and best of all, it was convenient. I could do it in the comfort of my own living room, in my pajamas no less. And sure enough, the first 6 days were AWESOME.

Then…

You might have guessed it…

I stopped.

But even though I only did 6 out of the 30 days, you better believe I learned a few things from the process.

So without further ado, here are the 3 things I learned from failing at a 30 day yoga challenge:

#1: The goal should be about you – not the exercise.

I really enjoyed the first few days because each lesson was about me, and the yoga was just the way to explore the topic of the day. For example, the first day was all about motivation. So with each move – some more tortuous than others – the common thread was the encouragement of the instructor to consider your motivations for all that you do. Another day was about mental strength, another about taking risks, and so on.

Maybe that’s what’s wrong with our fitness goals in particular. We focus too much on the activity or the end result and not enough on ourselves, and how we may need to change the way we think in order to achieve success.

#2: My usual steps to success are not always enough.

Like I said, this goal had all of the right stuff for me. It was convenient, had a specific deadline, and it was something new. But alas, here I am, writing this post as a failure to complete my mission.

So what was missing?

I spent some time contemplating this, and it’s obvious to me that it has everything to do with motivation, or lack thereof. Which brings me to my next point.

#3: I’m not upset that I didn’t finish – and that’s ok.

When day 7 came and I didn’t do it, I felt the slightest twinge of guilt. But then, as quick as that twinge came, it left. Day 8 passed and I still felt nothing. Then day 9, and so on.

So I did something I have rarely done before when it comes to my goals. I decided to stop…and not feel guilty about it.

If you recall from my least favorite goal ever post, I decided recently that especially when it came to health and fitness goals, I would only work on ones that I was truly motivated to do, and that I would try to enjoy the process instead of just focusing on the end result.

Well in the case of 30 day yoga, I realized around day 5 that I really disliked the process. A lot. After that “newness” feeling wore off in a few days, I kind of dreaded pulling my mat out each evening. So when I skipped a couple of days I asked myself, if I dislike this so much, then why in the world am I doing it?

Does it mean that I am giving up on having any fitness goals ever?

Nope.

It just means that I am still looking for ones in which I can at the very least tolerate the process, and ideally enjoy it. And in the meantime I will get fitness in other ways – just not in a formal goal format.

So with that being said, here is your thought experiment for the day:

Reflect on a the last goal you failed to achieve. What can you learn from that experience?

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”                                       

                                                                                                                                                                      – Steve Jobs

Consider where you are at in your life, right in this moment.

I’m not just saying that for you to read it and move on – actually think about it.

Better yet, consider one of your greatest accomplishments. Or a milestone you reached.

Now consider, how did you get there? What are the moments that brought you to that very spot?

Perhaps you are thinking about a job you obtained, meeting the love of your life, moving to a new city. Whatever the case may be, for better or worse, that moment was the amalgamation of countless smaller ones, or dots.

I often think of my first full-time job in higher education. So many dots had to successfully connect in order to make that happen. For example, here are the ten big dots that led to my first full-time job, from the end to the beginning:

#10: Nailed the interview!

#9: Had 9 failed interviews within a few weeks leading up to this.

#8: Completed an internship in career services at Ivy Tech Community College.

#7: Applied to a master’s program in Higher Education and Student Affairs; my admission was denied.

#6: Narrowed my job search to career services jobs because I completed two informational interviews with staff at Butler University, making me confident in this path.

#5: Knew that I should do informational interviews because I was an exploratory student (i.e. undecided major-wise) for my first two years at Butler and we did that as a homework assignment.

#4: Learned that higher ed was even a career path/master’s degree option because my friend Katy was interested in it.

#3: Realized I really liked tutoring students in Speaker’s Lab; thought this could relate to a future career in some way, but wasn’t sure how.

#2: Was encouraged to apply for a job in the Speaker’s Lab because my speech professor in my first semester of college happened to be the director of that program.

#1: Enrolled as an exploratory student at Butler University.

I could go on and on, and on and on. How I chose Butler and that I wanted to be an exploratory student are an entirely different series of dots.

As you can see in that list, some of those dots were intentional, ones that I had total control over. Some were completely random.

For someone who likes to be in control (i.e. me) that concept can be quite unsettling. To some degree I can influence how the dots may connect, but not entirely.

I find comfort in something acclaimed psychologist Carl Jung once said:

“In all chaos there is a cosmos, and in all disorder a secret order.”

It makes me think of connect-the-dots books I had as a kid; I loved how structured it was, and that if I just followed the steps I would eventually have an amazing result.

When you consider your goals, sometimes you can more or less see the dots connecting – there are just a few steps you need to take to get where you want to go, and even though they are not all connected yet, you can still what the bigger picture may look like:

On the other hand, sometimes at the very beginning you have absolutely no freaking clue what the bigger picture is going to be…but the dots are all there, waiting to be connected:

The quote that started this post has been in my office for my college students to see for years; it has followed me from job to job as a potential source of comfort for the young people I support that don’t know where their paths will take them.

I say, do the best you can to connect your dots, but rest assured, they will connect to your next step in one way or another. You will get somewhere. Might it look like you imagined when you get there? Perhaps not. But there you will be, ready to start connecting new dots, and so on. I tell them, if I do nothing else but teach you the process of how to connect your dots, past, present, and future, then I have done my job.

It’s good advice that I should remind myself of every now and then. I’ll do my best to plan, make the best choices I can, position myself for what I want next…but a random dot stuck in the mix may very well lead me somewhere entirely new. And once I get there and take a look back, it will become crystal clear how I got there.

And now, as always, I leave you with a thought experiment to ponder:

What are the dots that have gotten you to where you are right now, and what might the dots be getting you to where you want to go next?