It's the New year, and I wanted to talk about the power of focusing on just one goal and how to strategically plan our entire year around that goal and how we can plan to make success inevitable. So we're gonna start from our yearly vision down to 90-day plans, right on down to my 2-pound plan, and make this year really count. Now, this is really important because, as I've discussed before, I love to make plans. I love planning. So I was the worst. I was the worst at over-planning and over-planning my goals for the year. I would start with 10 goals, would have no measurable way to know where I started with those, no visible plan of where I was going. I would very cutely put on my planner every three months quarterly check-in. I had no idea what I was checking in on. I wasn't measuring a thing. And honestly, I don't even know if I made it past the first quarter. I can tell you I definitely did not make it past the first quarter for many of the goals, but even the couple that I hung onto, I didn't make it all the way through the year. I just had no strategic plan for how I wanted my goals to go. When I made a very specific plan and focused on one specific goal, I was much more successful.
So what we want to do if we piggyback on last week, we sort of pick our focus word. We've realigned with our core values, and we've picked one goal, maybe two (don't tell anyone). But let's talk about one. We want to have one goal for this year that gets 80% of our attention. The problem with getting more than one goal here, I said earlier, trying for more than one goal is nothing is ever going to get 100% of our intention. We have things we have to do, things we're responsible for, maybe people we're responsible for, so we can't ever give 100% of our effort to one thing. I think I'm being generous, saying 80% of our effort can go to a goal. But you can see if I can only give 40% of my effort to a goal, if I split that into two goals, I'm really not giving it the attention it deserves. So let's assume we've got 80% of our time we can focus on one goal. We will be successful. If we are focusing on one goal, we start breaking it up and splitting the 80% eight ways. It's very unlikely that we're going to reach our goal.
So we want to have one goal for the year. So if my goal is to run a half marathon this year, I know that is my one goal for the year. That is what I'm gonna plan. I want to make sure that aligns with my core values. Health and overarching words, so health and persistence were the two that were the example we used last week. Health and persistence, a half marathon makes perfect sense.
I want to then think about what I need to accomplish every quarter to make that goal inevitable by the end of the year. Thinking that I am going to run a half marathon the first month that I start this journey is a recipe for disaster. Even saying running every day so that I make sure I meet this goal is probably not gonna work out. Life happens, and when we are planning for perfection and then life happens, we will interpret that as failure and we will quit. So I'm planning to go to the gym every single day or go out on the street and run a mile every single day, and then it's raining or I'm sick or the kids are sick or I have something really a deadline for work that I can't miss, I will miss a day. And if I've only allowed for perfection, I will quit.
So I need to decide how much I really need to get done every quarter from my half marathon goal to be inevitable by the end of the year. So if I want to be running 13 miles in December and I work my way backwards, I need to run 1 mile in January, one and a half in February, and so on.
So what I want to do once I've sort of laid out the year by month or by quarter, I'm gonna take that and break it into a 90-day plan. So I'm gonna take my run 3 miles and break it into a 90-day plan. What do I need to do this first 90 days to get to 90 miles by the end of March? And I'm gonna plan it out. So if you are choosing this as your plan and you have not been running at all, then the first couple of weeks, all I want to do is walk and see where I am and try and walk more. And then maybe I want to do 30 seconds of jogging intermittently, right? There's all kinds of plans we can look up. I am in no way a race trainer. Don't listen to me too carefully. When I was learning how to run, I would like 30 seconds on, one minute off, and I would do that a few times, or if that felt too daunting, 30 seconds on, and then two minutes off, sort of recovering again. That's all I want to do in a 90-day plan. I'm gonna take that 90-day plan and I'm gonna write it in my planner or put it on my calendar, whatever it is, what I need to do each week. OK, I like doing this by quarter. I'm experimenting with this this year. I was previously doing it by month. I like the idea of a quarter because when we revisit every three months, I feel like that's a good amount of time. I've already admitted I'm not good at the reflection part, and so the idea that I'm gonna stop and reflect on these things every month, I just don't know that that's realistic. So I'm gonna experiment with the 90 days. If you know that you love to reflect every week, then I want you to break the goal all the way down into weeks.
Now, for my healthy eating and weight loss goal setters out there, this is where I do break it all the way down. I take my 90-day food protocol, whatever I've decided, and I will break that down into each week at a time. So to switch gears and let you see what that looks like, if my food protocol and the difference between a protocol and a diet, a protocol is just these general rules that I want to stick to with how I eat, what I think would work for me for this 90 days. So if I'm gonna try three meals a day, try not to snack, no concentrated sugars, that's my protocol. I can expand a little bit, limited alcohol, limited dark chocolate, whatever. OK, so that's my protocol, it's sort of my overarching plan. But I want to do that each week. I make a plan, so I like to plan my dinners. I need to look at my obstacles and see, is there a party I'm supposed to go to? Are the kids gonna be late doing sports? What obstacles do I need to work into my one-week plan? Then am I having any exception eats or a jury eat? An exception eat is something that is not on my protocol, on my overarching protocol, but it might be something that's a one-time thing, like, OK, it was my birthday last week, so for my birthday, when I am planning my weekly meal, that night at dinner, I will have dessert. So I'm gonna write that down for the week. I'm gonna plan it ahead of time, but it's an exception to my protocol, so I'm gonna plan it as an exception. And that's gonna go in.
So I'm gonna look at that, and I'm gonna get very specific, more specific on my weekly plan. Like if I want to lose a lot of weight, I'm gonna make a plan that I think will help me lose 2 pounds that week. So I've taken my overarching yearly goal of losing weight, however much it is. I've broken it down by quarter. I take my 90-day food protocol. I'm gonna experiment and be curious with this type of eating for this 90 days, no bread or no flour, no sugar, limited snacks, limited alcohol, three meals a day. That's my protocol for 90 days. And then I'm gonna go all the way down to the week level. These are my meals for the week. This is my obstacle. This is my exception. Then I'm gonna go all the way down. If it's meal planning, you're gonna go all the way to the day. We're gonna write our meal plan for the day, and we're gonna look at that plan. We're gonna look at our plan as we go this whole way and say, is this reasonable? Can I do this? Does this feel easy? Right. When I set my protocol and say three meals a day, no snacks, that feels easy to me. That does not feel hard. If it feels hard, my brain won't want to do it. And then I'm gonna have all of this food negotiation in my brain. I'm gonna try and check out and check myself into eating things that are off my protocol. Like my little primitive brain's gonna freak out.
So every step along the way, does this feel easy? Does this feel like something I can do? Does this feel achievable? Does this feel good? So my 90-day protocol feels good. My week feels good. I've planned for my obstacles. I get all the way down to my day. Does my day make sense? I'm gonna take that, and then I get much more specific. I'm gonna have leftovers for lunch. I'm gonna have food-prepped egg bites for breakfast. I'm gonna have a coffee with heavy cream. I'm gonna have this for dinner. OK, write it all down, and then I'm gonna look at my plan and say, does that look good and easy? Do I feel like I can do that? Do I feel confident that I'm gonna say yes? If I say no, I'm gonna change it until I say yes, and then I'm gonna stick to my plan.
If you plan in this way, your success is inevitable because when we flat and revisit 90 days later, so we started January 1, when we do this and we reset our protocol for March, we can see, like, if I was stuck to my protocol and I lost weight, maybe keep going. If I didn't stick to my protocol, maybe I need to rework that protocol. But it's more but something that I can stick to a little bit better. Why didn't I stick to that one? Why? What can I do to make it better? If I stuck to my protocol, I didn't lose weight. How can I tweak it a little bit? Can I add some more vegetables? Did I really need those snacks? Can I push breakfast a little bit? OK, so we want to tweak it. That's why I love this idea of every 90 days, short little spurts that can be judgment-free, and I can revisit every 90 days. Does this make sense? Does this feel like something I can accomplish? And if I got 90 days and I haven't been sticking to it, I can stop right then and ask myself why not? Why have I not been sticking to this? Is it too hard? Is it too restrictive? Did I not have enough time? Has my focus been pulled somewhere else? Do I need to refocus? Do I need to revisit my focus word for the year? Do I need to revisit my core values? Do I just need to look at my calendar and kick some stuff off of it? Do I need to set some boundaries?
So we have these opportunities four times. We're gonna have one when we set these goals, and then every quarter, we have an opportunity to do this reassessment. What's working? What's not? Do I keep going, or do I make changes with no judgment? This is so different than what I used to do. I would just go lose weight and then I would just float through my year with no direction, no point to revisit and reflect and regroup throughout the year. And then I'd get to the end of the year, and I would be disappointed because I didn't make my... I would get to my birthday at the beginning of January and feel sad or disappointed that I hadn't done what I wanted to do the year before. It really wasn't my fault. I was not setting myself up for success. Creating this yearly plan, breaking it down into 90-day chunks, breaking those chunks into daily plans that we know we can stick to, that we feel good about, that we've checked in along the way. This is achievable. This feels good. This feels easy. I know I can do this. We are going to succeed. We are going to meet our goal. And if we don't, we are going to be so close. We're gonna have learned so much, and we're gonna be so proud of ourselves. Anyway, it's gonna be ridiculous. It's gonna make for the best end of the year ever.
So I love this idea. I'm giving ourselves these breaks every 90 days to refocus and adjust. And if we need to do it sooner than that, we do. If we need to do it every 30 days, I love it. I'm in for it. OK, whatever is gonna work for you. Just don't make plans with no measurable and just hope it works out by the end of the year. It's not going to. If it does, it's not because we've done anything strategic that we can learn from. It's probably not going to if we set a measurable goal that's in line with our core values, that is lined up with our word for the year. We have a strong GPS of where we're going. We break that goal down into these bite-sized, achievable sections that give us a chance to reflect and with curiosity and compassion ask ourselves, is it working? Is it not? What do I need to change, or do I just stay the course? We just keep plugging along, and we will get there. We have so much reason to celebrate by the end of the year.
OK, I hope this was helpful. I hope you're inspired to go set some goals. If you need help making a 2 pound plan you know I’m here for it just sign up on my website. I can’t wait to hear your plans. I want y’all to send me your plans and your goals. I want to be inspired by you so please send them to me let me know how it goes. If you found this useful, please share this podcast with a friend and I look forward to talking to you next week all right bye.