BADASS MINDSET PODCAST

Your Blueprint to Success: A Practical Guide to Effective Monthly Goal Setting

• Lacy Wafer • Season 2 • Episode 50

Share episode

Welcome to this special edition episode of the BADASS MINDSET PODCAST, where we are diving into the transformative practice of monthly goal setting!!

Goal setting is a POWERFUL tool to elevate your personal and professional life. So, in this episode, I'm introducing a new monthly segment, designed to be a collaborative space for us all to reflect on our previous goals and plan our new monthly goals together! This is going to be a dedicated space which will help us to step into the most BADASS versions of ourselves and manifest everything we desire.

What’s Covered:

  • Introduction to Monthly Goal Setting: I'm sharing how I began MY goal-setting journey in 2014 with a simple poster board, evolving it into a more aesthetic vision board and now, in 2024, into a detailed and strategic yearly, monthly, and weekly goal-setting routine.
  • The Power of Visual Reminders: We'll talk about the benefits of having your goals VISUALLY present, and how it aids in MAINTAINING motivation and keeping your aspirations top of mind.
  • The Four Categories of Goal Setting: I break down the system that has exponentially upleveled my life:
    • Health and Well-being
    • Career and Money
    • Lifestyle (standards of living, relationships, hobbies, etc.)
    • Podcast-Specific (this one may look different for you, but we'll dive into how to determine YOUR unique categories!)

Steps in the Goal Setting Process:

  1. Categorize Your Goals: Start by categorizing your goals into no more than four areas to maintain focus and prevent overwhelm.
  2. Define Up to Three Goals per Category: Aim for a balanced mix of RESULTS-focused goals and HABIT-based goals.
  3. Reflect Monthly: At the end of each month, take time to reflect on what went well and what didn’t, and try to understand the reasons behind both.
  4. Adjust and Plan for the Coming Month: Based on your reflections, adjust your strategies and set new goals for the next month!

Are you ready to join me in this goal-setting journey, reflecting on our achievements and challenges, adjusting the course of action, and setting new, ambitious yet attainable goals for the coming month?! 

We'll be doing this from now on, in a dedicated space/episode, on the last Monday of every month! So, subscribe to the show on whichever platform you're listening, mark your calendar, and let’s make each month a stepping stone to our most-fulfilled and most-BADASS life, together!!!!

Share a personal story or submit a question you'd like answered in a future episode!

❤️‍🔥SUBSCRIBE to the podcast for weekly tips and insights to fuel your journey!⚡️

❤️‍🔥Add us on IG & TikTok @badassmindsetpodcast & @boldlylacy to connect deeper + ignite your journey and keep your growth game on point!!🤘🚀 Let’s goooo!

Speaker 1:

Hey babe, welcome, or welcome back to the Badass Mindset Podcast. I'm your host, laci, and I'm going to help you train your brain and your body to manifest groundbreaking levels of health, happiness and success in your life. I'm so fired up. You're here because it is time for us as a society to rewrite the outdated belief that wanting and achieving more is greedy, selfish or just wishful thinking. We're about to go on a deep dive into mindset mastery, where you'll learn all about how to rewire your brain, turn your setbacks into your success story and awaken the ultimate badass that lives within you. So if you're ready to create some serious magic and epic results in your life, take a quick minute to set an intention for what you want to get out of listening to this episode, and then let's fucking go. Hey babe, I'm so glad that you clicked on this episode because this is something new, something I said I wanted to start doing on the new trailer, when I switched the podcast name from the Bold and Badass Podcast to Badass Mindset. This is something I'm going to attempt to do once a collaborative space for us to do goal setting, planning and reflecting together so that we can continue to up-level, be the most badass version of ourselves and manifest everything that we desire. So I guess I'll start by sharing that I've been doing goal setting like intentionally since 2014. It started off as a poster board that I would do at the end of every year I would write my New Year's goals on this poster board would do. At the end of every year, I would write my new year's goals on this poster board. There'd be anywhere from five to ten things that I wanted to accomplish over the full year and I would hang it up on my bedroom wall that I would see it every single day and just be reminded of the things that I wanted to accomplish that year. And this served me so well because it was always right there for me to see, to keep top of mind, and it really helped with my motivation on those days where I wasn't really feeling like it Didn't really want to show up, because it was right there to remind me hey, this is what I said I wanted to accomplish this year.

Speaker 1:

After the first few years it went from a poster board of my goals for the year to a vision board. I started doing vision boards and I fell in love with it. It also helped me to keep my goals top of mind, but it was also a little more aesthetic. I'm a creative person, so I like my space to be aesthetically pleasing, and so it was something fun for me. And then, eventually, when I started realizing how powerful goal setting was, I started doing it monthly too, and now, in 2024, I do yearly, monthly and weekly goal setting.

Speaker 1:

I even try to have these conversations with myself daily, but at the very very least, I am brushing up on my goals and adjusting my strategy as needed every single week, and we'll talk about how to do that. But in this episode specifically, and what we're going to be doing once a month, towards the end of the month, is we're going to plan out our goals and our plan for how we're going to achieve those goals for that next month, and we're going to keep this very simple. I have a very simple process for how I do this, and this process is what has helped me up level my life in so many ways, exponentially. I've lost over 75 pounds. I have more than tripled my annual income. I've become an almost full-time autonomous entrepreneur. We are getting very close to that goal and literally so much more. But those are just a few of the big things, so I'm excited to share this with you and see what all you are going to accomplish after implementing this process.

Speaker 1:

So, first things first. I have four categories that I break my goals into. You can adjust these to however they fit into your lifestyle or your desired lifestyle. The first three will probably be the same for you. My fourth one might be interchangeable for you, but my four categories are health, wealth, lifestyle and podcast. I have goals that I focus on every single month that pertain to my health and well-being, my career and my money, my lifestyle, and underneath the lifestyle umbrella is my standard of living, my relationships, my family, what I do for fun, those kinds of things. And then podcast is its own category, because I have goals within the podcast that tie into multiple categories. So, anyways, those are my four categories. If you are following along with me right now, you should write these down, write health, wealth and lifestyle down, and if you have other categories you want to add, you can add those. I wouldn't have any more than four categories, though, because if you do, your list is going to start to get really long and could potentially overwhelm you to the point of burnout, and then you might give up and not do anything. So now that you have your three to four categories, you're going to pick no more than three goals within each category that you want to focus on for the coming month. Now I'll give an example Underneath my health category.

Speaker 1:

For the month of August, my three goals were to prioritize water and daily movement. Were to prioritize water and daily movement, to get in at least 13 gym workouts and to weigh in between 144 and 147 pounds. Something huge I want to note about how I pick goals is did you notice that not all of them are results-focused goals? Only one of them is Weighing in between 144 and 147 pounds. Is a results-based goal right? I'm either going to weigh in at 144 and 147 pounds. Is a results-based goal right? I'm either going to weigh in at 144 to 147 pounds or I'm not. The other two goals are habits-based. They're just about me showing up prioritizing water and daily movement. There's no way to effectively measure that. It's just something to keep top of mind. It's not an added chore to my daily to-do list, making my to-do list a mile long. It's just something to keep top of mind so that I'm fueling my body in that way. And then at least 13 gym workouts is a habits-based goal that is measurable because it encourages me to show up to the gym and every time I do I get to check off a day. So I want you to keep that in mind when you go about choosing what your goals within your categories are going to be.

Speaker 1:

I try to keep that structure within all of my categories, so it's not 12 action steps to do every single day just to meet the bare minimum of my goals. That could become easily overwhelming. But they're also not a list of 12 things to just think about or focus on, like prioritizing water and daily movement. If I have a list of 12 things to prioritize, then what's actually being prioritized? You can't prioritize 12 things. That literally defies the definition of prioritize. That could also lead to overwhelm and burnout and you not prioritizing anything. So in a perfect world you might have one thing to prioritize or keep top of mind in each category, one habits-based goal in each category, something you get to check off each day as you complete it, and one results-based goal in each category, something that would be realistically achievable if you keep the right mindset and you show up daily and perform the habits that will lead to that result. Now I won't go through my entire list and tell you what every single one of my goals were, because that would take up entirely too much time and really draw this episode out. But the next step in this goal setting process is to reflect over the previous month. Now, if this is your first time doing this process, then you might not have a structured list to go through and reflect over, but you can still do this step that I'm about to share. So you're going to ask yourself four questions and you'll want to write these down. So pull out your notebook, type them up on your computer, print them off, hang them on your wall, put them in the notes app on your phone, whatever you have to do so that you see them and you never lose them.

Speaker 1:

First question is what went really well this month? If you're listening somewhere near the time that this episode came out, what went really well in the month of August? Well, for me, I accomplished all three of my podcast goals. I posted on Instagram and TikTok at least 22 days, I brought up the podcast with at least five people and I scheduled two new interviews. I also finished reading you Are a Badass at Making Money. That was in my wealth category. I completed two incremental upgrades to my home. I added cabinet handles to my kitchen cabinets and I replaced my shower caddy. I have an episode on incremental upgrading and how it helps you to manifest, so go listen to that after this if you haven't listened to it yet Game changer. But anyways, I did really well on a lot of things on my list. So that would be the first step. What went really well this month? Then I'm going to ask myself question number two why do I think these things went so well? Well, for starters, I created a plan on how I was going to succeed. I went through this process we're going through now, wrote out the plan on my big whiteboard, I scheduled everything into my Google Calendar everything that could be scheduled at a specific day and time and I looked at this plan every single day, multiple times a day, so it stayed top of mind.

Speaker 1:

I used to struggle posting on Instagram and TikTok, but recently I started creating lots of clips from my podcast episodes and using those to post on my social. So it's made posting consistently a lot easier than having to come up with other content to post off the cuff. I'm taking the burden of having to always be inspired or always be creative, to create new content off of my shoulders, and I'm batching clips from podcast episodes and using them as content. So that's one reason that I think I was successful in this area. It made it really easy. I posted well over 22 days this month.

Speaker 1:

I've also made it a habit to just talk about my podcast more consistently in general. Anytime there's a conversation where I see a segue to talk about the podcast, or if I've made an episode about something that's relevant to what we're talking about, I'm like, ooh, perfect opportunity to bring this up, to recommend an episode or to share how I could potentially help with whatever we're talking about. And then I typically prefer to have a hard copy book in my hands. I like to feel and flip through the pages. But I ordered you Are a Badass at Making Money on Audible this month and I listened to it on my daily movement walks or while at the gym, so it was really easy to get that read just by habit, stacking and killing two birds with one stone. I've also started the next book that I wanted to read, which is the Psychology of Money, and remember, these are under my wealth category, so that's why they're all about money, money mindset they're relevant to that category. I read books on all different types of topics in the personal development space category. I read books on all different types of topics in the personal development space, but for this category specifically, it's going to have something to do with money, career or wealth building. So those are some examples of my thought process on why I think those things went really well for myself.

Speaker 1:

The next question you're going to ask yourself, question number three, is what did not go so well this month? Which one of my goals did I not complete or which one did I not prioritize as much as I would have liked to so well this month? Which one of my goals did I not complete or which one did I not prioritize as much as I would have liked to? For me this month, I think one of the areas I fell short was the gym workouts. I wanted to get at least 13. At the time of this recording, I'm sitting at eight. I still have a few days left in August, so I can probably close that gap a little, but I don't know that I'll get all the way to 13. I would basically have to go every single day for the rest of August and I can tell you right now that's probably not going to happen. That's not realistic. So that's one area. I didn't get into the gym as often as I wanted to.

Speaker 1:

Under my lifestyle category, one of my goals was to get dressed as often as possible. That's not something I was necessarily measuring. I wasn't checking off how many days I got dressed, it's just something I wanted to prioritize. But I can tell you now I did not do that very often. I probably got dressed a couple days this month. And what I mean by get dressed is like don't roll out of bed and just stay in my pajamas all day, because entrepreneurs work from home, people stay at home. Parents, you'll get this. It is so easy to just roll out of bed and stay in your pajamas all day, stay cozy, not put in any effort into your appearance and not that there's anything wrong with that. But there's an old saying that goes look good, feel good, and as cliche as it is, I hate to break it to you, but it's so true. So one of my goals this month was just to prioritize getting dressed and changing out of my clothes that I went to sleep in. I didn't do my best at that this month.

Speaker 1:

Another one was to meditate as often as possible. Now, I didn't completely bomb this one. I'd say I was about 50-50 for the month, which isn't terrible, but I do want to get back up to it being a daily habit, just because I know how big of a difference it makes in my life, my energy, my mindset, my motivation, my focus, my clarity, literally in every way. It just completely transforms my entire experience. It's something that really makes a difference, but it is something I have to be intentional about doing.

Speaker 1:

A lot of you will relate to the idea that after you work out, you always feel so good and you're like, yes, the benefits are so clear, you feel good, you're proud of yourself, all the things. But man, it's so hard sometimes to get yourself to just show up. Well, that's kind of how meditating is for me. Some days it's so easy, I'm looking forward to it, I'm motivated and it just feels natural. And then other days I'm like, okay, lacey, I know you don't want to do this right now, but you're going to feel so good after, you're going to be so glad you did it, and so those are some examples of things that did not go as well for me this month, and then the next question you're going to ask yourself, question number four, is why do I think these things did not go so well?

Speaker 1:

Well, for me specifically, I had a lot of curve balls this month, like seriously, a lot of things came up that drained my energy or really took a lot out of me, took a lot of attention, effort and just energy, and I prioritized sleep instead of working out. Am I mad about that? No, not really. And on top of that, I did prioritize daily movement. So, even though I didn't get my 13 gym workouts in, I did move my body almost daily. So I don't feel like a failure in this category, and I totally understand. There are going to be seasons in my life that are busier than others, that do not go as planned, and that's okay. I can still show up and do the best with what I have, make the most of the situation that I'm in, and I feel like I did do a good job of that. So, even though I fell short, I feel like I have a fair reason as to why I fell short and I will be mindful of that when planning for September.

Speaker 1:

For the other two we just talked about under my lifestyle category not getting dressed as often as I would have liked to and not meditating as often as I would have liked. To the reasons I believe I did not do, it was really two parts. One I genuinely think I might have overfilled my plate just a little this month. That's something I tend to do more often than not and it's something I try to be mindful of when planning, because I am not the sit around and do nothing type. I do like to be on the go. I will get restless if I'm sitting still for too long and I don't think that's a bad thing as long as I am giving my body the rest it needs when it's asking for it. But I genuinely think I just scheduled a little too much for myself this month, so I actually didn't have time to do everything that I wanted to do this month, and that's fine. I will plan better next month.

Speaker 1:

The other reason is more on me. I didn't set myself up as well as I could have. Getting dressed might have been easier if I set my clothes out the night before, if I made it an effortless, yes, more convenient for myself to see the clothes there and then have that pattern interruption of like. You know what. They're right there. All I have to do is strip down and put the new clothes on. It's not that hard Lacey. But when something is out of sight, what is it? Also Out of mind? So by not setting myself up, I was making it really easy to not follow through on that goal and then for meditating, it kind of just got thrown by the wayside. When I didn't have time to do everything on my list, I didn't prioritize it over the other things on my list. So, yeah, I could say it was a motivation thing. I could have done it during any of the in-between periods or the down times where I did nothing or I watched TV or whatever. But also I didn't schedule enough do nothing time. So there is a logical explanation for that as well. So we'll just do better next month.

Speaker 1:

Now, one thing I want to note is when you're reflecting, you want to do this from an unbiased third-party perspective. Right, pretend that it's not you. You're auditing. You were given a report on some random unknown person about. This is what their goals were. This is what they accomplished. This is why they think they did and this is why they think they didn't. It's very unbiased black and white. There's no emotion attached to it. That's how you want to look at yourself and your goals while doing this process.

Speaker 1:

I don't want you to make excuses for yourself like, well, this happened and this came up and that's totally valid for why I didn't feel like doing it, so whatever. But I also don't want you to beat yourself up if you had a hard time or you just had an off week or two and that kind of impacted the progress of your month as a whole. You just really want to separate yourself and your worth from this. Take yourself out of the equation and just look at it as data and then, once you have the clear picture, what went really well, what did not go so well and why do you think those things went really well or did not go so well? Now you're going to pick your new goals for next month and in doing so, you'll ask yourself what can I do differently this next time to have a better experience and to get a better outcome? And you just want to make these micro tweaks to your process each and every month to help make this a smoother process for yourself and an overall better experience. You do this enough times, enough months and you're going to start to see patterns. You're going to start to see what structures and what methods really support you and what doesn't, and this is going to be your blueprint to success, to achieving all of your goals and manifesting the lifestyle of your dreams.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes I just can't even believe how far I've come and how much I've accomplished since starting this goal setting process and refining and refining and refining it every single month until now. I've almost got it down to a science and I literally love doing this every single month. It's so exciting to me, it's something I look forward to and I have so much fun with. It's really a sacred practice. I always try to pick a dedicated day close to the end of every month where I don't have any other obligations, or I have a big chunk of my day where I have nothing else to do, no responsibilities, and I just come into my office, set the vibes and let myself go into a flow state for an hour or two and just fully immerse myself into the process.

Speaker 1:

I have a big whiteboard where I write down my goals for the month. I've also got a snapshot of my yearly goals for that specific year, my core values that I live my life by. I've got a list of characteristics. I'm rewiring a blueprint of the identity of the woman I'm becoming in a couple cute quotes. But it's right here. It's in big, bold letters. I see it every day, multiple times a day, and I keep it top of mind so that I'm constantly remembering what I said I wanted to accomplish and staying as motivated as I possibly can to keep chipping away at those goals. So this was actually longer than I expected it to be. I anticipate that they'll get shorter as each month goes.

Speaker 1:

Maybe, I don't know I might have to re-explain the process each time, or maybe I'll just refer everyone back to this episode to learn the structure and the process of what we're doing and then in the future goal-setting episodes we can just dedicate the time and space to actually doing the process together, or something I don't know. We'll figure it out. If you have any ideas or preferences on how you want me to do this, by all means please let me know. There's a link at the top of the show notes that says share a personal story or ask a question. If you want to have it answered on a future episode, you can use that link to give me your thoughts and your feedback on this episode. Let me know what you liked, if you would do anything differently, or how you would like to use this space moving forward, because I want it to be actually helpful. I don't want this to just be for myself, so please let me know. But that is it for this episode.

Speaker 1:

I'll share more about what I'm working on and creating in the coming weeks. I'm so freaking excited for what is coming in September. I cannot wait to share my September reflections at the end, after I've accomplished all of my goals, and I would love to hear what goals you're setting for September. Part of what solidifies this process and makes it real for you and incentivizes you to show up and do the things is looping somebody else into your plans. When you share your goals with someone else, that lets the universe and your subconscious know that you're serious, you mean business and you have every intention on following through, so use me as that source.

Speaker 1:

I am more than happy to be your accountability partner and your cheerleader, and I'm so, so excited to see everything that you accomplish too. So let's do the damn thing and celebrate our badasses together. Peace out See you next time. Thank you so much for being here and, queen, give yourself a high five for showing up and committing to be the best version of yourself for you and your people. You are such a badass for that. If you got anything good from this episode, would you send the love back by DMing me on Instagram at Boldly Lacey, letting me know exactly which part resonated with you? These types of messages empower me to keep showing up, and they also help me understand the types of conversations you really care about. All right, bestie, we'll talk again soon, but for now, it's time for you to step up and start being the badass that we both know you are.