Podcast Transcript for hearing impaired

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another edition of Elevating with Marcia. I'm your host, Marcia Hawkins, and welcome aboard for another program. Today's topic, we're going to be talking about goals, setting goals, intentions, whatever you want to call it. I've got a new take on it, a new twist, if you will, and I'd love to get your feedback on it.

All right, so I was out taking one of my daily walks the other day, and I was thinking about how our goals go or we set intentions. It becomes, in my opinion, very applicable this time of year once we get children back into school and change of season. Summer coming to an end.

In our minds, I think September and January are the two biggest months for gym memberships. And I know why. For some reason, the end of August and going into September, it always gets us thinking about what we want to accomplish before the end of the year. Of course, the end of the year, we think to ourselves, we set our New Year resolute New Year's resolutions and what we want to accomplish for the new year.

And it's really kind of oh, I don't know. It was very enlightening for me the other day when I really started thinking about my personal what I do at the end of the year and what I do this time of year. Because this time of year I'm usually working on year end projections for my business. I'm usually working on what I want to accomplish before the end of the year, things that I want to do prior to the holiday season.

A lot of times I'm very much engrossed in the open enrollment. I do health insurance as well as property and casualty in life, so I'm always kind of gearing up for that because that can be a chaotic time. I can be on the phone anywhere from six in the morning till two in the morning during open enrollment, it gets very chaotic.

So this time of year is when I really start to kind of look at everything, and then the week between Christmas and New Year's is I try to read a book every year called Awaken the Giant Within from Tony Robbins. It's just a book that, I don't know, resonated with me, if you will. I learned a lot out of it, and I love to reread it every year. Sometimes I have to skim it because I don't have time, but for the most part, I try to reread it every year.

Another good book that I like is The Awakening Course by Tally.

It's one of those things that it centers me. It's kind of my compass, if you will. I really enjoy it. There's a plethora of other books. The Alchemist is another one that I really, really like. But for some reason, Awaken the Giant Within, for some reason, just really seems to focus me and gets me thinking about specifically what.

My intentions will be for the new year. Every year I write my year end goals for the following year for what I want for the new year's. And I look back, I write my goals, and then I take out the ones that I wrote from the previous year. And I try to look and see, okay, where were my hits and my misses?

And I would say, on average, 80% to 90% I usually accomplish. And a lot of times if I haven't, it really comes down to things that happened within the year. I lost both my parents last year and within the last year, and I had a lot of challenges with that.

I took on a new business last year, so I had to adjust. And at the time when I wrote the goals, I had not accepted that new business right at that juncture. So there were some adjustments, but on some levels, not only did I accomplish what was on that list, but I also accomplished a whole lot more. And I learned a lot this year. I learned an awful lot. And I've made a lot of personal decisions which, if you've ever read Awaken the Giant Within, it really talks about the power of decision and the power of not being able to make a decision.

But I found that book to be such a fascinating book and very much like I said earlier, a compass for me in terms of the direction that I want to go in. So in thinking about that, I was out for my walk the other day and I was thinking about a number of things and I'm not going to get into it because it just has to do with me and nobody else, but just thinking about some of the things that when I set goals or whatever. And I kept thinking into myself, goals, goals, and saying that word over and over. And I'm thinking, is there a better way to frame that?

Is there a better way to think about how we achieve our goals or why we set our goals?

In some cases? For example, if you look at the failure rate for alcohol and drug addiction has a 97% failure rate. And I kept thinking about that over and over again. I have people in my life that have addiction issues and I tell them at times there's days where I really understand it and there's days where I really do not get it.

I interview people sometimes about their alcoholism or their drug addiction or their food addictions, whatever it happens to be. And why is it that they can't seem to overcome them? And I remember years ago asking a friend of mine what finally was the the catalyst for her being able to finally quit drinking. It's a funny story. Worry. She has since passed away.

But I'm still not going to tell the story. But it's actually a very funny story, but I'm not going to tell it on the air because I promised her I would never tell anybody. And it was a pretty profound event in her life that prompted her to finally quit drinking.

And ironically, there's a phrase out there called dry drunking. And she was definitely, in my opinion, a dry drunk. Even though she had stopped drinking, her behavior that surrounded the drinking never changed. And she actually worked at a recovery center. And she said to me one day, I don't understand why I help so many women.

She worked in a women's house for recovery and how she was able to help all these women. And yet, even though she wasn't drinking, her life was just completely out of control. And as I said, she sadly passed away last September. She had taken her life, which is very sad to me.

She was a lifelong friend of mine and ironically, both her children succumbed to drug overdoses, one drug overdose and a fentanyl drug overdose, and she finally couldn't go on anymore. And I know I've kind of veered off the cliff with this a little bit, but it's important because I just could never understand making a conscious decision to do something that is so damaging to our bodies. I mean, think about our cars. Like, you buy a car and you take it in for an oil change and you buy new tires for it and you wash it and you love it and you vacuum it and you clean it, and yet we don't seem to do that for our own bodies.

I honestly do not get that. I don't get why we don't take care of our vehicle, the vehicle that is going to get us from point A to point B in life, and yet we continue to trash it with processed foods, alcohol, drugs, lack of sleep, just things that are just lack of exercise, things that are just simply not good for us.

We go to the doctors. I have done numerous shows on this topic, how we'll go to the doctors and the doctor will say, your blood pressure is up, your weight's up, this is up, that's up, this is down. And yet they whip out the prescription pad and they write your prescription for it and off you go.

And unfortunately, the behavior doesn't change. And hence, now we have thrown on top of all of our bad habits, now we're now taking prescription drugs that now have multiple side effects in some cases and actually compound the problem. It may fix it for a little while, but ultimately we really need to start looking a little more inward.

Mirrors are a beautiful thing with self reflection and our decision making. So where I'm going with all of this is that it just all kind of came to me one day that for me. I am changing the way.

Think now, I am not going to goal seek. I am not going to write a set of goals. I am not going to think about what I want as a goal. I am not going to think about it's an intention, these are my clear intentions of what I plan on accomplishing. I am throwing that all out. Today is a new day. It started, I think, last week, I think is when I was thinking about all of this. And it has been the burn in my belly, if you will, for how I think about this.

So today or last week, I should say, moving forward, I'm not going to use the word goal anymore. I am going to use the word rule. What is my rule? What are my new rules for 2024? What are my rules between now and the end of the year? Think about that.

I was just blown away by that when I was out on my walk. And thinking about really when it comes down to anytime something has gone awry in our life or not gone the way we thought, think back to the decision surrounding the outcome of that quote unquote goal and why we did not achieve it or why we did.

Chances are, if you dug deep in really thought about this, you didn't break a rule, a personal rule about achieving that goal or you broke it, which is why you didn't accomplish it. So moving forward, that is the word that I am going to use, whether I apply it to how I take care of myself.

I am a very disciplined person. I love to exercise every day. I eat pretty well. But again, when I don't, what did I do? I broke my rule.

I look back and I have not because I typically do not pull out my goal. Again, I'm using that word, my goal list, until the end of the year. Sometimes I do. If I'm trying to remember or I maybe want to add to it, I will. But for the most part, I really like saving it to the week of Christmas and New Year's and kind of take a look at it and then I draft my goals for the following year.

But this year I am going to be doing nothing but rule setting. I am going to impose a set of rules on myself that ultimately the outcome of those rules will be an end result of specifically what I'm looking to accomplish or what I'm looking to eliminate in my life.

Very powerful. It was such a cathartic moment for me. I just remember getting in my car thinking, this is it, this is it, and this is how I want to live the rest of my life. And I know that sounds kind of military a little bit in terms of having, but really what it is, it's structure, it's setting the rules.

For myself in adhering to them. I mean, life is nothing but a set of rules. And I went to court with someone recently, and they had messed up. And I remember thinking that day, sitting in the courtroom, looking around and trying to help that person, and I just kept looking around thinking,

all this is is a culmination of really bad decisions. And a lot of times we're our own worst enemy and we break our own rules and therefore we don't accomplish our goals or we look for that instant gratification and we're not looking at putting some parameters around us to really discipline ourselves to get done what we want to get done and really think about. Just think about and apply it to everything that you're trying to accomplish in your life. If it's saving more money, if it's losing weight, if it's doing more exercising, if it's better relationships, if it's expanding your business or whatever it is, I can promise you it will boil down to a couple of rules. And whether or not you broke them or you adhered to them or you actually just didn't take action at all on what you wanted to accomplish, So moving forward, that's how I am going to do it. Whether that works for you or not, I don't know. But I know for me, moving forward, the word goal is going out of my vocabulary, and I'm replacing it with the word rule or rules to impose upon myself, to ultimately accomplish where it is I want to go and what I want to see for myself and the results I want for myself over the coming year.

All right, everybody, that's my word of wisdom for the day. Goal replacement is now my rules that I am going to adhere to to then accomplish my end result of what I truly, truly want. All right, everybody, you've been listening elevating with Marcia. Tune in. I usually do a podcast about once a week, sometimes more, on Elevating with Marcia.

Make it a great day.