Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #106| Why Goal Setting Without Realistic Plans Leads to Frustration and Low Productivity (Stop Doing This!)
Transcript
- 0:01Michelle Gauthier: Today I'm going to share with you some behind the scenes about my goals from 2024, including what did not go well.
- 0:06Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:21Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former overwhelmed working woman and current life coach.
- 0:26Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences and in each episode you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life.
- 0:38Michelle Gauthier: Hey friend, thanks for joining today.
- 0:46Michelle Gauthier: It's good to be back with you.
- 0:47Michelle Gauthier: I took off about two weeks at the end of the year, which was lovely.
- 0:51Michelle Gauthier: I took a nice trip.
- 0:54Michelle Gauthier: I hung out with my family.
- 0:56Michelle Gauthier: My very favorite part was I hosted two different things at my house, which I absolutely love doing, and then my number one favorite is just hanging around with my kids at home, when we're all here.
- 1:07Michelle Gauthier: We don't even necessarily have to be in the same room.
- 1:09Michelle Gauthier: I just love when everybody is at home.
- 1:11Michelle Gauthier: It feels so cozy and happy to me.
- 1:14Michelle Gauthier: But today what we're going to be talking about is our goals, and I have been talking about goals since 2021.
- 1:23Michelle Gauthier: 2021?
- 1:25Michelle Gauthier: Since 2025 started - I just did a real throwback there and if you did not listen to the series from last week, which is helping you evaluate your own 2024 and thinking big about what you want to do in 2025, I definitely recommend that you go back and do that so that you can just get to thinking about how your last year went and what you want to create this year.
- 1:48Michelle Gauthier: If you're listening to this on the day it comes out, on Monday, then you should know that I am teaching a class tomorrow at noon central time.
- 1:56Michelle Gauthier: There's still time to register, the link is in the show notes and you can create your own successful goals for 2025.
- 2:06Michelle Gauthier: I will give you all the scoop on how to do that, but today I'm just going to basically get personal and tell you about my goals from 2024, the things that I applied in order to attempt to reach those goals, where things kind of fell apart, etc.
- 2:22Michelle Gauthier: So I'm going to give you the scoop in hopes that you will be able to take something away from this for your own goals in 2024.
- 2:30Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so there were three main goals that I worked on for last year.
- 2:36Michelle Gauthier: My word for last year was 'Dialed In'.
- 2:39Michelle Gauthier: I guess that's two words technically, isn't it?
- 2:41Michelle Gauthier: But my word for last year was Dialed In and I really wanted to focus very specifically on very few things, and this really really worked for me and in fact, that's part of what I'm teaching in my class tomorrow is how you can do that same thing.
- 2:58Michelle Gauthier: If we pick too many goals, we just lose focus, and you know, if hitting your goals becomes your full time job when you already have a full time job in a family, everything can kind of fall apart.
- 3:10Michelle Gauthier: So I chose three goals.
- 3:11Michelle Gauthier: Here's what they were.
- 3:12Michelle Gauthier: Number one was I wanted to get stronger.
- 3:16Michelle Gauthier: The desired result that I wanted was to get stronger.
- 3:20Michelle Gauthier: So the goal that I set up for myself in order to accomplish that desired result was to work out by lifting weights three times a week.
- 3:30Michelle Gauthier: I belong to a gym where they have three times a week strength workouts.
- 3:37Michelle Gauthier: The workouts are all designed for me, I don't have to think about it, I just have to show up, and so for me, that is very helpful.
- 3:45Michelle Gauthier: I know from trying to work out during the pandemic that working out with other people is the type of accountability that I need, so that's why I set up that goal for myself.
- 3:56Michelle Gauthier: My gym also, which is really helpful to me, offers I don't even know how many classes in a day.
- 4:02Michelle Gauthier: There's like 10 different times you can go, so there's really never a day unless I'm out of town that I couldn't make one of those times.
- 4:15Michelle Gauthier: The first one is at 4.45 in the morning, so I'm not usually doing anything else at 4.45 in the morning except for sleeping.
- 4:19Michelle Gauthier: Here's how I went about accomplishing this particular goal.
- 4:21Michelle Gauthier: First thing that I had to do was check my mindset.
- 4:24Michelle Gauthier: So if I had a thought like - and I did, by the way, have this thought - of, I've never been strong, I was a runner always and so I just thought of myself as a person who had good cardio endurance, or built up good cardio endurance but did not necessarily have strength and muscles, and so what I used to do with that thought in my mind is I would skip a lot of the weightlifting days at my gym.
- 4:54Michelle Gauthier: I would do the cardio ones because I was good at them.
- 4:56Michelle Gauthier: This is a - this is something about myself that I know.
- 5:00Michelle Gauthier: I like to be good at stuff, and if I'm good at something, I'm much more likely to do it.
- 5:04Michelle Gauthier: So it's much harder for me to do something I'm not good at.
- 5:07Michelle Gauthier: I cannot be alone in this.
- 5:08Michelle Gauthier: This is maybe the human condition.
- 5:10Michelle Gauthier: So I just sort of would and prioritize those days less and prioritize the cardio days more.
- 5:17Michelle Gauthier: And I decided for this year to really flip that and I thought that if I set a goal of going three times a week, there are classes - potentially, I could go six days a week.
- 5:26Michelle Gauthier: I have done that before.
- 5:28Michelle Gauthier: That for me, personally - there are lots of people who do that, and if you do that and it works for you, that's awesome, but for me personally that was too much.
- 5:35Michelle Gauthier: It was too much to commit to.
- 5:37Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes there are days where I'm just tired and I want to sleep.
- 5:40Michelle Gauthier: I think my body needs rest, whatever.
- 5:43Michelle Gauthier: So anyway, I picked the three days, I worked on my thought that I am not strong, I've never been strong, I'm just not built that way.
- 5:52Michelle Gauthier: My sister is the one who's strong, not me, as if only one person in a family can be strong.
- 6:00Michelle Gauthier: Anyway, I had all these thoughts that I can now laugh at.
- 6:03Michelle Gauthier: So the thought that I stuck with for the year was not, I am strong.
- 6:09Michelle Gauthier: Because I did not believe that.
- 6:10Michelle Gauthier: And if you don't believe the thought that you're trying to adapt at all, it's really hard to adapt that thought.
- 6:17Michelle Gauthier: So the thought that I really believed was, I'm great at being consistent.
- 6:21Michelle Gauthier: And that feels really true to me, because when I put my mind towards something and I commit to it in my mind, I'm great at being consistent.
- 6:28Michelle Gauthier: And so that was the thought, I'm great at being consistent.
- 6:32Michelle Gauthier: So from there, I had several processes that I would do, but the biggest, most important one, if you were to say, like, what did I do to get this goal?
- 6:41Michelle Gauthier: Besides, like you know, drive to the gym and get out of the car and actually do the thing: I planned my week every Sunday.
- 6:48Michelle Gauthier: When I planned my week on Sunday, part of that planning was to look at the schedule for the gym.
- 6:52Michelle Gauthier: Look at my schedule for the week, put those three classes on there, and do them.
- 6:57Michelle Gauthier: And then the third thing that I did, which was new, is I set up meetings with the trainers at the gym, like you could set up a meeting and then just meet with whoever the trainer is that day to talk to them about it and over the course of the year I think maybe my goal was to do that once every four to six weeks, I don't know.
- 7:19Michelle Gauthier: Over the course of the year I did like nine of those meetings.
- 7:22Michelle Gauthier: So those meetings are easy and fun to go to when you feel like you're making progress.
- 7:27Michelle Gauthier: We have this cool scale that measures like how much muscle you have and what your body fat percentage is and how much you weigh and all that stuff.
- 7:34Michelle Gauthier: So there were a couple times where I went into those meetings thinking, this is not going to be great, because I can tell that I have not been eating as healthy as I could.
- 7:45Michelle Gauthier: Or there was a three week period where I didn't go to the gym at all because I was on vacation for two and a half weeks and then I ended up getting sick.
- 7:53Michelle Gauthier: Maybe it was more like a month that I didn't go to the gym at all.
- 7:55Michelle Gauthier: So the meetings after those, and some of them where I actually thought that I was doing well and the progress wasn't that much - it's a bummer to go back to those, but I just kept going.
- 8:07Michelle Gauthier: I just kept going because I am consistent.
- 8:10Michelle Gauthier: I'm great at being consistent.
- 8:12Michelle Gauthier: That's what I told myself and in those meetings I learned something really important.
- 8:17Michelle Gauthier: One of the trainers, Ashley, said to me all you have to do is, every time you go to do a weightlifting station, just ask yourself, could I do a little bit heavier?
- 8:27Michelle Gauthier: And if the answer is yes, then you try it.
- 8:30Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so I did that.
- 8:32Michelle Gauthier: Ever since she gave me that advice, which was maybe mid-summer sometime, I did that every single time, Every single station, every single time: Can I go a little bit heavier?
- 8:41Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes I would be like, yeah, I think I can, and I'd do two reps, and I'd be like, actually, no, I can't, I'm going to go back to that other rate.
- 8:48Michelle Gauthier: So it wasn't like, oh, and every time I lifted heavier - nope! But I just kept trying, and over the course of a year I grew so much more confident in the weight that I was lifting but also in the idea that I could just try it; I could just try it.
- 9:24Michelle Gauthier: And people noticed that I was doing that and started encouraging me as well.
- 9:24Michelle Gauthier: I had great accountability from the trainers and the people at the gym and the reason why I had all that was because I know that's what works best for me and I set myself up for that.
- 9:24Michelle Gauthier: So in the end, at my last focus meeting of the year, I had gained 4.7 pounds of muscle.
- 9:27Michelle Gauthier: To me, that is amazing.
- 9:31Michelle Gauthier: My goal was five, so I got 4.7 pounds of muscle.
- 9:35Michelle Gauthier: So am I going to say, oh, I, oh, I didn't hit my goal?
- 9:39Michelle Gauthier: No, my goal was to go three times a week, unless I'm sick or out of town, and I freaking did it and the result that I got was 4.7 pounds of extra muscle, which for a woman who is my age, and really for any woman, is amazing and important for the longevity of my life, which I want to live as long as possible, to make as big of an impact and enjoy life as much as I can.
- 10:03Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so that was my number one goal.
- 10:07Michelle Gauthier: My number two goal was to take my kids to Europe by myself.
- 10:09Michelle Gauthier: This goal started in either 2022 or 2023.
- 10:13Michelle Gauthier: When I first had this goal and I talked to my kids about it - my kids, by the way, were lukewarm the entire time on this.
- 10:20Michelle Gauthier: We had the very best time on this trip, but they were - it wasn't like oh, we're all on the same page and pushing for this goal.
- 10:27Michelle Gauthier: I wanted to have this goal because I'd had the opportunity to travel.
- 10:30Michelle Gauthier: I wanted to give that to my kids.
- 10:32Michelle Gauthier: Amazing.
- 10:33Michelle Gauthier: So when I first started out in 202 - , I think it might have been 2022, with this goal, and I'm writing down, like what are the things that I need to do?
- 10:42Michelle Gauthier: What are, like, the five big steps to get this goal done?
- 10:46Michelle Gauthier: The first one was like decide, I'm going to do it.
- 10:49Michelle Gauthier: So I had to check my mindset again.
- 10:51Michelle Gauthier: Kind of like my mindset before of was there something saying, I'm not strong, or I can't take my kids to Europe by myself, or whatever, and I really didn't have - I know a lot of people, when I went on this trip, said to me I can't believe you took your kids to Europe by yourself.
- 11:06Michelle Gauthier: And I was like, yeah, I didn't, I did not struggle with that, and I think the reason why I didn't struggle with that is because I've traveled to Europe by myself and I also take my kids places ever since they were babies.
- 11:18Michelle Gauthier: We lived out of town from our parents when we were, when our kids were little, and so we would travel all the time, both on vacation and to come here.
- 11:25Michelle Gauthier: So I felt very confident about that.
- 11:27Michelle Gauthier: So I did not, unlike the muscle goal, I did not have a lot of thought work to do about this one.
- 11:32Michelle Gauthier: I believed that I could do it.
- 11:34Michelle Gauthier: I just needed to do it.
- 11:36Michelle Gauthier: So number two on the list was basically have the money to take this trip or be on the way to making the money to take this trip, because I was going to pay for this trip from my own earnings, from my own business, and that made it even more exciting and extra for me.
- 11:52Michelle Gauthier: But here's the thing - I didn't have the money to do it when I came up with the goal.
- 11:56Michelle Gauthier: But if I hadn't come up with the goal, I wouldn't have known that I needed to start working towards that.
- 12:03Michelle Gauthier: So, even though my goal started in 2022, and actually finished in 2024, if I hadn't started the goal or had that glimmer of, you know what would be really freaking fun to do with my kids, I wouldn't have even started working towards it.
- 12:19Michelle Gauthier: So the things that I had to do in 2022 and three were to get my money in order.
- 12:25Michelle Gauthier: It really helped me to have this goal, so that I started to pay myself as if I had a salaried job, because when you're self employed, your your money goes up and down, like sometimes you may make a lot in a month and sometimes you might not make a lot in a month, and so, instead of like living by those boundaries, I started just managing my money and paying myself a salary.
- 12:49Michelle Gauthier: So that was really great because that enabled me to live off X amount, save another amount and just work towards that trip.
- 12:58Michelle Gauthier: Meanwhile, I got to daydream about what I wanted to do, and what happened in the meantime is, first of all, my best friend from growing up moved to Paris, just totally unrelated, and I was like, amazing, I get to see Heather, maybe I can stay with Heather for part of it.
- 13:13Michelle Gauthier: And then I reconnected - actually, honestly, we've never lost connection, but sometimes we go a while without talking to each other - to my friend, Simonetta, who I met when I was 20 years old and I studied abroad in Germany, and she's Italian and she was also studying German, we just hit it off.
- 13:30Michelle Gauthier: We've been back and forth to visit each other many times and so I reached out to her and said, hey, I'm thinking about doing this and she was like oh, my gosh, absolutely we would love to see you, just tell me when.
- 13:40Michelle Gauthier: So I kind of started planning in my mind.
- 13:43Michelle Gauthier: Okay, fast forward to actual 2024.
- 13:45Michelle Gauthier: So this is a goal on my list.
- 13:47Michelle Gauthier: I've now got the money, or most of the money.
- 13:50Michelle Gauthier: I didn't have all of it, but I knew I could get it by the time we needed to leave.
- 13:53Michelle Gauthier: So my goals - this wasn't a goal that I had to work on every week, like the muscle goal.
- 13:59Michelle Gauthier: This was a goal that had like very specific milestones and things that I needed to do.
- 14:03Michelle Gauthier: So my goal was, by the end of Q1 to buy the plane tickets.
- 14:07Michelle Gauthier: And I did.
- 14:09Michelle Gauthier: I bought the plane tickets and that was amazing because then the money was gone and the trip was a for sure thing.
- 14:14Michelle Gauthier: But I really didn't need to do a lot after that.
- 14:17Michelle Gauthier: And then when we got to Q2, because we were leaving in July, I started working on the planning and I would just spend like an hour a week thinking about and making plans and looking up like where should we go, what should we do.
- 14:30Michelle Gauthier: And by the time we left for the trip I had researched how to pack in a carry on for two and a half weeks, which, by the way we nailed it, except we brought too much stuff.
- 14:41Michelle Gauthier: We could have brought much less.
- 14:43Michelle Gauthier: I mapped out the countries we were going to go see.
- 14:46Michelle Gauthier: I scheduled activities in those countries.
- 14:47Michelle Gauthier: I figured out the train situation, I got us train tickets, I coordinated with my friend and so just by spending like 30 to 60 minutes a week I was able to create this trip of my dreams.
- 15:03Michelle Gauthier: And when we took off for that trip, the three of us, I was thinking, I really hope this is fun.
- 15:10Michelle Gauthier: I hope my kids don't fight the entire time.
- 15:13Michelle Gauthier: I hope they aren't like, oh, this isn't interesting or this is boring or whatever.
- 15:17Michelle Gauthier: You know how teenagers will do.
- 15:19Michelle Gauthier: And you guys, we had the best time.
- 15:23Michelle Gauthier: I mean there were moments, obviously, but we had overall the absolute best time and it was just absolutely wonderful experience.
- 15:54Michelle Gauthier: Probably my favorite goal of the year.
- 15:58Michelle Gauthier: And my third goal, which was a business goal, was about my podcast.
- 16:01Michelle Gauthier: What I wanted as a desired result was for my podcast to be in top 1%, and what I had at that point I'd had the podcast for about eight months and it had done well.
- 16:14Michelle Gauthier: We were top 5% and then got to top 2.5%, I think at the beginning of 2024.
- 16:20Michelle Gauthier: So I wanted to get that up to top 1%.
- 16:23Michelle Gauthier: That goal is really out of my control, so it's not a good goal.
- 16:28Michelle Gauthier: That's more of a desired result.
- 16:29Michelle Gauthier: So when I thought about, what can I do, what I could do is consistent - you know I'm great at being consistent - consistently keep recording episodes, which I knew I could do.
- 16:41Michelle Gauthier: But there was more to learn and I was not the person who knew it.
- 16:45Michelle Gauthier: So when I thought about who could keep me accountable or what I should learn, I ended up hiring these podcast coaches called Get More Listeners - shout out, they're amazing - to help me, and so what they helped me with, I met with them every week.
- 17:04Michelle Gauthier: In fact, I still do.
- 17:10Michelle Gauthier: They helped me with so many things, from the quality of the sound of the podcast to having keywords for the podcast, to looking at which episodes did well and which episodes didn't do as well.
- 17:17Michelle Gauthier: They shared their expertise with me.
- 17:19Michelle Gauthier: I spent $6,000 to work with them, which is a lot of money, and also totally worth it.
- 17:29Michelle Gauthier: So sometimes when you have a goal and you don't know how to reach it and the goal is kind of out of your control, hiring an expert like a life coach or a podcast coach or a personal trainer or a dietician, somebody who does this type of stuff every day, can help.
- 17:46Michelle Gauthier: So for this particular goal, I hired people.
- 17:49Michelle Gauthier: I worked with them all year.
- 17:52Michelle Gauthier: I'm so glad I did.
- 17:53Michelle Gauthier: I learned so much.
- 17:55Michelle Gauthier: The podcast did continue to get better rankings and we ended up the year at top 2%.
- 18:01Michelle Gauthier: So I went from top 2.5% to top 2%.
- 18:06Michelle Gauthier: So again, kind of like the 4.7 pounds of muscle, I could be like ugh, I did all that work and I didn't get my goal.
- 18:15Michelle Gauthier: But instead what I'm thinking is okay, maybe that top 1% is going to take longer than I originally estimated.
- 18:22Michelle Gauthier: I'm not quitting.
- 18:24Michelle Gauthier: I'm not thinking that anything I've done is bad or wrong, even though we have done things in trying it out that didn't go well, that you could consider a failure, but I just know that I'm going to keep going until I get that desired result.
- 18:38Michelle Gauthier: So hopefully that helps you understand how I not just set up but also worked towards my goals, with bumps in the road and not always getting the desired result that I wanted.
- 18:51Michelle Gauthier: And when I don't get the desired result, just like you should do when you don't get the desired result, is you just keep going.
- 18:58Michelle Gauthier: Maybe the goal took a little bit longer.
- 19:00Michelle Gauthier: That's a wrap for today, friends.
- 19:02Michelle Gauthier: So, in general, what I hope you're taking away from this is the idea that there is the setting of the goals, which we're going to do tomorrow on the Your Best Year 25 workshop, and then there's the doing of the goals, which is what I just explained to you.
- 19:17Michelle Gauthier: How for me, doing things like planning my schedule every Sunday, and putting time on the calendar where needed in order to get to the goals that I have.
- 19:27Michelle Gauthier: I also review my month.
- 19:29Michelle Gauthier: I look back and see how the month went.
- 19:31Michelle Gauthier: I make plans to adjust for anything that didn't go well or things that did go well for the next month.
- 19:37Michelle Gauthier: So I'm constantly checking in with myself, checking in with my goals, planning time to work on them, and that is how you get real traction.
- 19:48Michelle Gauthier: Have a fantastic week.
- 19:49Michelle Gauthier: I hope to see you all tomorrow at noon, central time.
- 19:52Michelle Gauthier: By the way, if you are going to register or already have registered and you can't make it to that time live, that's no problem.
- 19:59Michelle Gauthier: The recording will be available, probably about 20 minutes after the class is finished, so you can listen to it and work through it on your own if you like.
- 20:06Michelle Gauthier: But I always think being there live is the best.
- 20:09Michelle Gauthier: So, if at all possible, come live and plan your goals with me tomorrow.
- 20:13Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 20:23Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.
- 20:27Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 20:29Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.