Latest / The Growth Project / Episode 390: The Mid-Year Reset

Transcript

Episode 390: The Mid-Year Reset · The Growth Project

• 0:00
  We say this with everything. The first step is awareness. You have. Yep. Recognize that there's a problem. You have to recognize that you are drifting away from your goal and drifting away from the actions you said you would do.
• 0:15
  Refocus. That's a big part of this. But you can't do that without first checking your yourself and yeah, where you're at.
• 0:24
  Welcome to The Growth Project, a podcast brought to you by AMP Loaf's Doctor Drew Brand and joined by Doctor Gabby Caveat. As it's been a little while that we've since we've teamed up. I know, yeah. As the team's growing, we're getting more variation with the podcast.
• 0:40
  It's great to be back talking about, today's subject, and I think it's certainly fitting for you and I to be doing it because it isn't necessarily a part two. But we had a conversation, back. What feels like how many years ago does that feel like now?
• 0:55
  At least a couple. But it wasn't. It was actually just in January and we were talking about, starting the year off pertaining to goals. Right. And a very normal practice that a lot of people go through, of looking ahead to their year and thinking about both personally and professionally, set goals. And yet, what do we know?
• 1:16
  Despite everyone's best intentions, often happens. A majority of people fall off from those goals. We we set them at the beginning of the year. And then, you know, a few months in, they're forgotten about or they're on the back burner because life gets away from us and, we fail to make it right, make it priority for us.
• 1:39
  Yeah. It's just and you know, we quoted some stats even that day about the how dramatic the fall off is. But it is those numbers are not encouraging unfortunately it was like 60 something percent drop off a few months. Yeah. And depending on which study you look at sometimes I think they're even slightly worse than that.
• 1:59
  So. Yeah. So just to start off on a high note, right. That's just so encouraging. No, but I think, you know, as we were talking, Gabby, today's conversation, I think in many ways is even more important than the one that people want to have the beginning of the year. Right? So we know that starting off well is important.
• 2:19
  And so we have that conversation in January. But why do we feel like kind of this mid-year check in, this mid-year check point is maybe even more important than the January discussion?
• 2:31
  Well, it's, to me, it's really the realignment piece of like I said previously, life gets busy. Your priorities shift. And and ultimately, your goal gets away from you.
• 2:45
  And so this mid-year check in point and, you know, hopefully it's something you've been doing more frequently than right, hoping that. Yeah, right. But unfortunately, what we know is that's typically not the case. It does get forgotten about. And so this time, when it's so crucial to realign you for the rest of the year, get you back on track if you have drifted.
• 3:08
  And that really is the the term we use in psychology for this. It's it's goal drift. And it's just this natural process of drifting away from your goals. Yeah I think that's that term is really important. Right. Because I think the way a lot of people unfortunately tend to conceptualize and think about where they are, is less goal drift in.
• 3:32
  Instead they're using that term failure which we know the moment you begin to think along the lines and apply that term to yourself, most people are actually more likely to kind of shut down versus reengage. So we obviously want to be reengaging, not shutting down. But yeah, I mean, this is a conversation and we really want to challenge you to just just be honest with yourself.
• 3:54
  Like we're halfway through the year. Many people and I think there's two main audiences here. Either you did set goals back in the beginning of the year, and so this is a conversation around, hey, let's honestly assess and reflect on where are you. And then the other I think audience would be, maybe you didn't do that. Maybe you're halfway into your year and you never set goals.
• 4:17
  Or maybe you started, but you didn't quite finish. This is also a great opportunity to say, all right, I got you know, I'm halfway through. Fine. I've got six months ahead of me. What do I want to look? I want it to look like. And I think the other way, you know, a lot of people, depending on what organization you're a part of, operate on kind of a fiscal year model anyways.
• 4:37
  And so you're starting your year right now and maybe that's how you do your goal setting. So I would also acknowledge that there are plenty of people who maybe they they roll from July 1st to June 30th. And so hey, we're here for that too. That's a great point. It really is. I think for a lot of people professionally, that New Year's resolution time point of what do I want to accomplish professionally this year?
• 5:00
  What are the numbers I want ahead? What are
• 5:03
  performance growth metrics I want to hit this year and that is it's, it's a great time to realign with that. Yep. And a final note before we fully jump into it that I want to mention is, if you aren't doing this or if you haven't been doing this in the past, really want to challenge you to think about, like, when is the right time to assess and pay attention?
• 5:25
  Because let's take an easy example from sports, any sport and World Cup is going on right now. Let's take the World Cup. I was just watching the other night and just like they do in plenty of sports, they they've showed the bench and the staff is on the bench and they're all hovered around the iPad. And what are they doing on the iPad?
• 5:44
  Analyzing. They're watching what happened. Right. They're assessing the reflecting so that they can adjust. They're not doing it after the game. It's too late. Then they're doing this during the game. And you would want to be thinking the same way about your goals and your objectives. I hope you're not just like thinking about how it's going once it's over, right?
• 6:04
  That's not going to do you a whole lot of good. You need to be consistently assessing and reflecting as the year goes on. So that's what we're here to do.
• 6:09
  yeah. And one final note I'll add on this. And you mentioned it briefly, but you know that there's perception of failure and that causing the goal drift. But just to reiterate like this is not a conscious thing that happened.
• 6:22
  That's right. That's right. That is unintentional. You're not most of the time it is. It can't be the case. But most of the time you're not consciously deciding to drift away from your goal. So. Right. That's why the reflection piece becomes so important is to assess am I drifting and if so, how do I get back. Yeah.
• 6:44
  Yeah. Very well. So it's not a matter of like oh somewhere along the line you consciously decided that other things mattered more than your goals. And so you then kind of voluntarily and consciously walked away from your goals. Not even close. That's not what this is. Okay. So Gabby, let's get into talking about we know what tends to happen.
• 7:03
  Let's talk about both why it tends to go that way. But then also what are some of the misconceptions that people have in that they're they're not quite on target in terms of understanding why this has happened and what the needs are,
• 7:22
  what we're really good at justifying why we're not meeting our goals. Right. And one of the most common things I hear from my clients in regards to this is I just need to be more disciplined.
• 7:36
  And that that may be true. Maybe you do need to have a little bit more discipline, but more often than not, it's not the discipline that needs refining. It's your environment. It's the systems you have in place is do you have that are moving you towards your goals?
• 7:55
  And oftentimes, you know, in conversations you'll say, okay, well, what are you trying to stay disciplined to.
• 8:01
  Yeah. And if you don't have that system or process, it's really hard to stay disciplined. It's especially hard to stay disciplined as we age. Right. Because what do we know about developmental psychology? We get better and better kind of being ourselves. So let me point out an example of what you're talking about related to kind of environment and in processes and clarity and all of that.
• 8:23
  Let's take the easy example of like, let's say you started your year and you have a specific sales goal in mind, and it's higher than what you did last year by a pretty significant margin, whatever that might be. And you don't have a new plan. Well, how do we expect that to go? We'd be crazy to think it's going to go really, really well.
• 8:45
  You know, when you set a goal, but you don't update and also kind of build the support of a plan to facilitate that. It's probably not going to go very well. Right. And so I think it's to your point, you know, when we talk about building plans and building systems, that is then creating environments in which we operate.
• 9:07
  And unless there's a lot of thought going into building that, building the structure, building the plan, those goals are going to be really, really difficult. And I think what tends to happen is as people begin to kind of look up at the scoreboard and recognize that, oh, gosh, I'm really not trending toward where I thought I could or I wanted to or whatever it might be.
• 9:30
  Then they start to just kind of fall off. Yeah. And that honestly leads right into another common misconception, which is it's all or nothing. Yep. That's right. And we see this all the time. Quotas. Right. Well, I didn't meet my monthly quota for the first three months of the year. So yeah, there's no hope. There's no hope. What's the point?
• 9:50
  Right.
• 9:50
  And not that all or nothing thinking really. And tags. Goldrick. Yep. Right. Yeah. And it could be, in a professional sense, like you're describing. It could be on the personal side. I mean, just like we talked about back in January, one of the most common goals to be thinking about or categories, to be thinking about January, of course, is fitness.
• 10:10
  We also know that, you know, like, let's think about for many places in the world, the month of January, it's cold, it gets dark, really early. There are a number of things in place that make people more likely to want to just kind of hunker down and stay in. That's part of why many people don't get off to a great start.
• 10:29
  And it's normal, as you said, from an all or nothing thinking standpoint as they get to the end of January. And it's like, well, man, I said I was going to work out four times a week and I've worked out four times the whole month, so I guess I'll just try again in 2027. And this is again why I it's our brains just constantly play tricks on us and make it so easy to make those excuses in regards to our goals, because then you could say, okay, well, maybe July is a better time to prioritize getting in shape than the weather.
• 10:59
  It's better, it's nicer, but it's it's too hot. But then it's hot. I mean, my motivation was for summer and summer's. I messed over, so I'll just wait till. Yeah. So. Yeah, that that ability to to make excuses or explain why you're not moving towards your goal, that's, that is a whole nother battle. We have to do that example, though, is so fitting and yet ironic of like, oh, okay, well, January was bad because it's cold and now, well, July is bad because it's hot.
• 11:32
  It's like, wait a second, I thought cold was the problem, right? Not hot. Okay. So still in this category, Gabby, what is, another thing it gets, I think can happen here and pop up and be problematic is what we just call the motivation myth. So what does that very similar to what we were just talking about, where people believe that in order to act, they need to feel motivated.
• 11:57
  Yeah. I gotta feel like I can do it. Go. I gotta feel hyped up. I gotta feel energized about this. But what we know is that motivation is a byproduct of action, and you become more motivated through action. I can tell you, I, I don't wake up every day and want to go work out in the morning or, I don't have the motivation to, you know, every night where we have a goal right now to read the Bible for that.
• 12:30
  And some nights we get to bed late and I don't want to do it. Yeah.
• 12:34
  But
• 12:35
  that action leads to motivation. Yeah. And so that's the myth here, is that don't wait to feel good because that prevents you from ever doing it. Yeah. If you need to feel good in order to say yes to what you said you wanted to do it.
• 12:54
  Good luck with that. Yeah. And so, like, what tends, as you said, what tends to build the strongest types of motivation is consistency of action. And we can kind of debate and try to tease out the chicken or the egg there. But the research is pretty clear on that is it's no, what normally comes first is the action, which is why this kind of circles back to the early part of this discussion of why discipline is way more important than motivation.
• 13:20
  It's way more about do you have the discipline to do what you need to do? Then after you've done that for a while, it builds motivation. And the second piece of that is do you know the value behind the goal achieve? So what does that mean to you? And we'll get to that a little bit later, in the episode today.
• 13:39
  But that's just something to keep in mind is of course, motivation is built through action, but it's also built through what you are inherently getting from this. What you believe. Yeah. Value I just I get you get my brain going on this dynamic here a bunch too. And then I've had to correct coaches a lot over the years because coaches love to ask the question of, well, is he motivated?
• 14:04
  Talking about players? And I'm always like, let's talk about discipline. We can worry about motivation some other time. And I know that sometimes when they ask, is he motivated? What they really mean is discipline. But the wording matters there. And when you're talking about people who are who you want to perform at the highest level, let's talk about discipline, not motivation.
• 14:27
  Okay. So we know this problem's out there. Yeah. Let's transition and get into what do you do about goal drift. Get us going with that please. First up is no, we say this with our growth process.
• 14:41
  We say this with everything. The first step is awareness. You have. Yep. Recognize that there's a problem. You have to recognize that you are drifting away from your goal and drifting away from the actions you said you would do.
• 14:57
  Refocus. That's a big part of this. But you can't do that without first checking your yourself and yeah, where you're at.
• 15:03
  Yep. And this also reinforces this, as you're saying, this awareness importance. It also reinforces why we say so often you've got to have accountability. Because when we're talking about how do you raise a person's awareness or how do I raise my awareness that I've maybe drifted from some of my goals if I'm on my own for that, there's a possibility I'm going to miss it.
• 15:28
  I'm not going to be aware. I'm not going to realize and recognize the fact that I'm off the mark here. So you go all the way back to again January, and we're trying to put the right systems in place to increase the likelihood you do what you said you wanted to do. You've got to have accountability. Yeah. Whether that's an accountability partner and somebody that is, you know, in tune with what you've set for yourself.
• 15:49
  Or we talked a lot about this in the, beginning of the year. Episode tracking. Yeah. That's right. Are you consistently tracking your progress either daily or weekly. To be able to say or see hey you know, I'm not progressing. I'm not doing the things I said I was going to do and that that's why tracking is so important.
• 16:11
  Yeah. And let's just have a quick you know, here comes a rubber meets the road statement right here. Buckle your seatbelt. There's never been an easier time in the world to have tracking. I mean with all the many tools that are now available to us in the way of I mean, I'll say software, but you really don't even need software at this point.
• 16:31
  I mean, these are just simple things that operate even on your phone, which maybe that's software. I don't know. It's not my expertise. So yes, tracking is is vital. It can even just be your calendar. Right. It could be like looking in. Did I schedule time focused on looking back at your week and saying, hey, did I actually did I do utilize this focused.
• 16:53
  Yeah. Or the next schedule meetings everything okay. So we've got to raise awareness I get that. And then once we've done that, what we hope is that you can you can be honest with yourself. You can kind of receive the the data on that in a way that makes you want to then kind of reconnect. And what we mean by that is not just with the behavior, not just whatever the goal is.
• 17:21
  You've got to go all the way back and reconnect to, why does this matter? Why is this important to you? Why did you decide initially that this was going to be on your list of things you were going to focus on? We know that what we're speaking to right now is really kind of the intrinsic component of this.
• 17:41
  It's internal to me. It's the reason or rationale. It's important to me. So we got to go there first. Yeah. And that goes back to what I was mentioning about the value piece. Right. Yeah. What why is this a priority. And we, we know through research that that intrinsic, motivation is the best time to have. But maybe for some people, it's not maybe for you.
• 18:07
  And the meaning behind this is that, you know, you you want to get a raise to better support your family, And and that's both. That's both kind of kind of both. Right. So there's whatever that meaning is just tuning in and really realigning with that and say, hey, why do I want this. Yeah. And I think it's important to stay there too on the reconnect piece.
• 18:28
  It's also okay to decide that something is no longer the right thing for you. That's that's okay. You know it might be that you started the year. I'll just make up some numbers here with kind of five key goals or five key objectives you really wanted to be better in or work on. And it's more than possible. You're now in July.
• 18:46
  And one of these is no longer that relevant. That's fine. It's more than possible that the reason you haven't given it a whole lot of attention is because it's just not as salient or noteworthy of a thing in your life, in which case just move on, you know, move it off the list. No problem doing that. Okay. So awareness followed by reconnection, where do we go from there.
• 19:07
  The identity piece is next is really builds off of that intrinsic motivation. And that was it's now connecting what you want and why you want it to the person you're becoming. And now I know why this goal has meaning, but what is it going to change about me? How is it going to make me better, as an individual?
• 19:33
  Yeah. So realign to your identity now as to, you know, maybe it's a new identity you want to take on. Or maybe, you know, it could be a leadership role. Or maybe it's an identity you want to make better, or even get rid of. So there's a lot of,
• 19:52
  ways that this can show up, but it ultimately relates to the person you're becoming through attaining this goal.
• 19:59
  Yeah, yeah. And that's just a matter of we've said it many times, you know, we are what we repeatedly do. Aristotle said that a long time ago. So, thank you.
• 20:11
  Your idea, not mine, but but yeah, it's true. It's true. And so the what is the identity? It's simply the byproduct of the things that we're saying yes to on a consistent basis. What we're saying here is that we know our tendency is to not say yes, unfortunately, to some of the things that we said we wanted to.
• 20:28
  And then we've got to move from once we're honest with our identity now, it becomes like, all right, let's evaluate. Right. You got to be honest in this. You have to go into this with your eyes wide open, with a spirit of humility and a willingness to just tell the truth. Let's keep in mind here that this is for you and your benefit, and no one else is really.
• 20:52
  But you've got to evaluate and just tell the story of what the data says. Are you doing these things? Are you not? Are you on track with the habits and behaviors needed to deliver on the goal and just tell the truth, right. And and then once you self-assess to where you're at, you then have to evaluate, you know, is this something that I'm on track with I want to keep putting effort into?
• 21:19
  Yep. Is it something that needs adjustment?
• 21:22
  Something that again, we talked about this at the beginning of the year, the importance of having a regular evaluative process, because your goals will need adjustment. Yeah. That's right. An initial outcome goal or have an initial process and realize it's not working. That's why evaluation is so important. So you can go back and refine.
• 21:43
  So maybe you have some that are in that phase of needing adjustment and then to your earlier point, or maybe also something you just gotta let go of. That's right. Or not, goals that you truly feel will serve you at this point.
• 21:57
  And so knowing based off of those three categories, where you at? That's a really great framework, very similar, you know, kind of your classic start stop.
• 22:05
  Continue. Now we're just saying on track needs adjustment. Let go the things you're on track with. Keep going. Continue right. If it needs adjustment probably need to maybe start some things. And then the stop would be what are we just going to let go of in. Recognize that whatever play you have been running, if it isn't working, you might need to do one in order to do the other, meaning you might need to let go in order to adjust.
• 22:37
  That's normal, and it's.
• 22:39
  so then the the final piece here, once we've evaluated and assessed where we're at and which ones, we're continue to put effort into adjusting or letting go of what's next. You mean I have to do something after I evaluate? Is that the then it's time to go execute like you at the end of the day?
• 23:00
  Yeah. You have to get to work on these things. Yes, we need to reflect in a set, but then it's all building toward me now, having a clear understanding of the plan that I need and then getting moving on the plan, that's where you have to do the heavy lifting, do the work, whatever you want to call it.
• 23:19
  We know it's about process over outcome. Process is what drives outcome. But process means activity. Yeah it's action. Action. Yeah we talked about it. You've got to act and then motivation will come. But those daily behaviors like you talked about your your systems and processes shifting into action on those. I mean you can have them all day right now and say these are the things I'm going to do, but until you're actually doing them and executing is you're not going to.
• 23:50
  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I was reading something recently and it was talking about how, now, granted, to be fair to this article, it was an article, primarily focused on like strategic planning and strategic thinking and all of this. But I kept reading it thinking like, is someone going to mention the fact that at some point you have to, like, do something, you know, like you've got to get going, you've got to activate and all of that is true.
• 24:17
  So, be careful you don't spend too much time and energy and effort devising like the perfect plan. You got to save some some bandwidth to actually, like, get moving.
• 24:29
  Yeah. It's, it's a great point that we talk the buzzwords around strategic planning. Yeah, but then what about strategic doing, strategic thinking like new article incoming. Yes.
• 24:44
  Okay, Gabby, now that we've kind of really walk through, our best attempt of explaining and helping everybody understand what's normal as it relates to this gold rift. And we understand human nature and some of the things that, transpire to get us here.
• 25:00
  Let's let's really narrow down now, and we want to give our listeners kind of this, this framework. Let's pull it all together with this framework that we'll call the four hours. And with the framework we want to provide to our listeners here, the specific questions. And so these are essentially like here's your action plan. So the action plan begins with what the action plan begins with reflect okay.
• 25:22
  So first are first are and again this all comes down to adjusting right. So the first question to ask yourself is where did I drift and why. So this is the first phase of awareness that we talked about,
• 25:41
  spending some time thinking about this. There's one question, where did I drift and why did it happen?
• 25:45
  Yeah. And that will give you the first stepping stone into. Okay, well, this is the goal I need to reprioritize. Yep. So that's that's where you begin. That's where you begin. Where did I drift? Why did I drift? Again, we've said this. We'll continue to say it. Honest assessment. Any other type of assessment is doing, you know, good.
• 26:10
  It's never beneficial to lie to yourself or others. So beginning with reflect where did I drift. Why. Which then moves us into the second are here realign. And as we get into this realign, we're asking ourselves does this goal still matter? Is it still the right one? Where does it fit? You can make whatever decision you need to make on that, in terms of deciding whether it does or doesn't fit.
• 26:37
  If it doesn't, I think the answer is pretty obvious here of like, okay, we're throwing that one out the back door. Moving on. But it's beginning with reflect. Then we realign once we realign and make conscious decisions around what fits and what doesn't. What's next? Redesign. Now it's time to redesign our number three. It's your systems. This is your daily actions.
• 26:59
  You know what systems and actions processes. Well moving towards this goal.
• 27:06
  And again going back to that evaluation piece, thinking about what has worked so far and what has it worked if it's not working. That's a clear indicator you need to redesign. Yep. Yeah. So and let me make a suggestion here. Get some help with that.
• 27:22
  Yes. Because let's let's take a step back. You're in the situation you're in, at least in part because the plan that was crafted in January hasn't worked as well as you thought it would. Okay. Nobody's no no problem. Nobody's fault necessarily. But don't stay on your own with this. When you're in this redesign phase. Get some get some perspective, talk to some people, get a little bit of assistance and help with with what you're trying to do there.
• 27:50
  And then once you've done that and you feel good about the plan, the final hour of the four is time to recommit and you need to feel that. So when we talk about recommit, what that really means is let's feel the weight, ideally on an emotional level of calm, like, I'm back in here. I started with the best of intentions, hasn't transpired quite like I wanted it to.
• 28:12
  No problem. I've gone through this progression and framework here. If I've got a new kind of reinvigorated plan, got to recommit
• 28:20
  I think one thing you said there really stuck out to me, and it's that piece of, you know, acknowledging that what I did wasn't working. And your response being and that's okay. That's a part of the process.
• 28:35
  A lot of people become demotivated by the fact that it hasn't worked yet. Yeah. And and that becomes the barrier. So that yeah they don't get to that redesign. They don't get to the recommit because they that sense of failure. Right. You've that's really I would say where people have to push through and challenge the way they're thinking about the progress that they've made to this point.
• 29:00
  Well, let's just be clear. One of the reasons that happens is because so many folks hear statistics and convince themselves that those numbers apply to everybody else.
• 29:13
  I know you just told me that whatever percent of people will fall on their, goals in the month of January. Man, I can't believe all those people do that right. Couldn't be be. So that's a big part of why we end up in this situation. Okay, so the four hours reflect, realign, redesign and finally recommit. That's your framework.
• 29:35
  And we really want to challenge everybody to yeah, be willing to do the work on that and you'll reap the benefits of it okay. So winding down Gabby final thoughts. And as we kind of wrap up from you, just encourage people to to challenge the way they're thinking that just because the goal hasn't, you know, progressed maybe to the degree of hoped it were to this point doesn't mean you need to throw it out the window necessarily.
• 30:02
  It could, but it doesn't necessarily mean that, I really encourage people to, at this point, recommit, like you said, and, and find that second wave, motivation and passion for, the changes you're wanting to implement so that, you know, a couple months from now, you do see that growth. Yeah. Agree with all that. And let me just mention this.
• 30:26
  We recognize this is tough. And yet one of the toughest things to do psychologically mentally emotionally is reset. It is really, really tough. Whether you're talking about like in the middle of a game, we're obviously talking about in the middle of a year, the ability to kind of like feel the weight of some degree of disappointment, which I would imagine most people feel.
• 30:53
  And yet do the honest work and reset and move forward with enthusiasm. It's tough. We talk a lot about and you guys have heard it on the podcast many times, emotional intelligence and like that's that's on full display when we when we think about challenges like this, it's tough to do. Okay. Well, as always, very grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the lives of all of our listeners.
• 31:20
  And we thank you for tuning in and joining us. Not just today, but week in and week out. We appreciate your support and all that we're doing here with the Growth Project and we will look forward to, spending time together again real soon. Take care, take care.