Sometimes It’s Necessary To Re-evaluate Your Goals

Welcome to Expand Your Life Podcast. This is Jc Jones and you’re listening to episode 33.

Welcome back everyone. I hope you’re doing well today. We’re going to talk about re-evaluating your goals.

Goal Evaluation 1

There are two types of evaluations that I find are important to goal achievement. The first type of goal evaluation that we will talk about today is a weekly evaluation of your goals.

Having a weekly evaluation keeps you focused on your goals, keeps you from forgetting about your goals. When I first started setting goals, I would set some at the beginning of the year and six months later, I’d be like, Oh yeah, I set goals. What happened? So these weekly evaluations will keep you from forgetting your goals.

It helps you to quickly make needed changes to your action plan or the steps you need to take to achieve your goal without getting behind or quitting entirely. If something isn’t working, your weekly evaluations are a great time to figure out a solution to that without getting frustrated and just quitting because you’ve gotten behind. A weekly evaluation, also allows you to take the time to schedule your action steps into your schedule each week.

It’s important to make your action steps for your goal, a priority. By doing this, by scheduling it into your calendar. Otherwise they tend not to get done. They aren’t prioritized. They get forgotten or pushed to the next day. Other things become more important.

Scheduling your goals into your calendar each week, I think is really important in achieving your goals. When I work with people in goal setting and achieving their goals, if it’s not scheduled into their calendar, they do not do it. But when they schedule the things that they need to do in order to move forward with their goals, each week, things get done.

When you prioritize anything, by actually scheduling it into your day or into your week, your chances of actually doing it are so much greater. So these weekly evaluations, are a perfect time to see what you need to get done that week, schedule it into your calendar, and it gives you a chance to, to see the progress you’re making.

When you accomplish something towards your goals each day or each week, it’s more motivating. You see the progress, you see the actions you’ve completed. It gives you a sense of accomplishment, a sense that you really can get this goal accomplished.

So how do you do a weekly evaluation? Well, the best time I find to do these is to do it during your weekly planning session for your upcoming week.

What? You don’t do that?

Well, no worries. If you check back in a few weeks, I’ll be doing an episode where I’ll go over what a weekly planning session looks like. That should be episode 39. And if you start incorporating just this one thing into your week, into your life, it will completely change everything. You will get so much more done, have so much more free time.

And don’t worry if you don’t consider yourself much of a planner.I too was not a planner, but I became one. I became a huge fan of planning. And the reason for that is it gave me so many benefits that I would never want to go back to how my life looked and felt like before I started incorporating planning into my week.

So if you’re interested in learning more about that, be sure to check back when that episode comes out. In the meantime, go ahead and start your weekly evaluations of your goals. This is where you’ll sit down and go over the goals that you have set. Go over your action steps or your action plan for achieving your goals and schedule into your week the things that you need to get done or get accomplished. Write them down in your calendar for the upcoming week.

If you’re not sure what an action plan or action steps are for goal setting, I’ll go over those a little bit more when we talk about the second type of goal evaluations later in this podcast episode.

This is also a great time to ask yourself what is working and what is not working with the goals that you have set. If you need to make any changes, this is the time to do it. Any alterations changes, pivots, all of these things need to be looked at on a weekly basis. This keeps things from getting out of hand.

This could be anything from scheduling your time differently during the day to work on your goals, it might be a different venue. If you’re going to the gym to work out and you either hate your gym or the gym is shut down. These weekly evaluations are a great time to figure out solutions to any problems that come up. So take this time to evaluate these things, figure out solutions for them and try something different.

We’ll go over some more troubleshooting issues with your goals when we talk about the second type of evaluations that are important, but this is the time to do it. Your weekly evaluations. Don’t let it go too long before you make any necessary changes.

So to recap, our first type of evaluation is a weekly evaluation. It’s used to schedule, to troubleshoot, keep you prioritized, keep you on track and moving forward with achieving your goals. If you are doing these weekly evaluations, you will not forget to work on your goals. You will stay on track and start achieving your goals.

Goal Evaluation Or Re-evaluation 2

Now, what is the second type of goal evaluation or re-evaluation that I recommend? These are the evaluations of your goals after you realize that you’ve forgotten your goals, you’re discouraged, you’re behind, life sucks, your goals suck, COVID-19 sucks, the politics and world events going on right now suck, life in general sucks and you just can’t deal with your goals right now.

These are the evaluations that are needed when you haven’t been doing your weekly evaluations, you’ve gotten behind and you feel like you’ve screwed up and don’t know how to get back on track. Or maybe you feel like there’s just too much to deal with right now, and you don’t even feel like you’re emotionally equipped to even handle working on your goals.

Your goals may no longer even be relevant to you. If you had some work related goals and aren’t working or you’ve lost your job, or your goals were maybe exercise related, and the gym you’ve been working at is closed.

Like we talked about earlier, all of these things can set you back. They can contribute to your putting your goals off or to the side or putting them on pause. So this is what we’ll talk about right now.

The first step of this evaluation is to figure out what exactly got in the way. You must figure out what the problem is before you can figure out a solution. And my goal today is to show you how to find workable solutions instead of giving up on your goals and giving up on yourself. Always look for solutions.

So today we’ll go over some problems and look for possible solutions. We’ll mainly be discussing the most common problems I see with getting off track with your goals. If you don’t hear a solution here today for your particular problem, keep brain storming. Or you can send me an email. Just send it to jc@expandyourlifepodcast.com. And I’ll see if I can help you.

All right on to problems and solutions. The first problem we’ll talk about is when you have forgotten about your goals entirely and or you’ve gotten so behind on your goals that achieving your goals at this point seems insurmountable. And you think that resetting your goals and starting fresh in the middle of the year,.. I don’t know, for some reason we think that goals have to be set at the beginning of the year. I’m not sure why we think that that’s the only time goals can be set. But they can be set any day, any time, any time of the year.

So if you’re behind in your goals, if you’ve completely forgotten about your goals, don’t throw in the towel just yet. You can simply reset your goals. Reset your goals for today or tomorrow. Today would be better. But it’s okay to reset your goal. It’s okay to go back and have a redo.

Every day is a new beginning. Every day is an opportunity for a fresh start.

There’s usually 3 main reasons why people forget about their goals. The first one is that it’s not aligned with your vision. The vision you have for your life.

Maybe you haven’t even thought about what the vision of your life is. Maybe you don’t have a picture of what you want your life to look like yet. There’s no reason to work on a goal that doesn’t in some way move you toward that vision. So if you don’t have a working vision of what you want your life to look like, now be a really good time to think about that.

Think about what you’re going to grow into. If you’re moving forward, if you’re working on any kind of personal development, you’re moving forward. You’re creating a new you. You’re creating something different. You’re going to constantly be growing, changing, moving forward. And your vision of your life has to align with that.

Your goals have to align with that vision of what you want that to look like. What you’re moving toward. So for now you can ask yourself a few questions about your goals to determine if they line up with the vision that you’re going to start working on.

• The first question would be: Does this goal move me closer to who I want to be or who I want to become?
• The second question would be: Does this goal move me forward or closer to how I want to feel?
• Question number three: Does this goal move me closer to what I want to have? And number four: Does this goal move me closer to what I want to do?

When you are creating your vision for your life, those are all questions that will help you envision what that will be.

• Who do I want to be? Who do I want to become?
• How do I want to feel?
• What do I want to have?
• And what do I want to do?

If you answer those four questions that will give you a much clearer picture of the vision that you have for your life. I’ll be talking a little bit more about vision in episode 48. So between now and episode 48, start asking yourself these four questions about your life and about your goals. Start getting the juices flowing. Get your brain focused on those questions and start writing or journaling the answers that you come up with.

The second, most common reason why we tend to forget about our goals is because we have a lack of planning. A lack of an action plan, with action steps that you take in order to reach your end goal. Many times when I ask people about the goals they’ve set for their year, they have no problem coming up with the goals, you know, lose 20 pounds, read more, organize the house. Whatever it might be, everyone knows what changes they want to make in their life to a certain extent.

But how do you attain it? How do you reach that end goal? What are the steps that you need to take to go from point a to point B? What are all the factors involved?

All of the things like research, things you might need to buy, if it’s exercising, what gym are you going to go to? What exercise program are you going to use? How much time are you going to spend doing this each week?

If your goal is to take a class or go back to school, you need to do quite a few things like paperwork, enrollment, financial aid, talking to your counselor about what classes you want to take.

All of these steps are things that move you towards your end goal and creating a plan to give you clarity and simplicity on the things that you need to do in order to reach that goal is key. So take each of your goals and just start writing down things that you need to do, things that you need to accomplish in order to reach that goal.

All of the things.

If it’s going to the gym, do you need to buy workout clothes? Do you need to buy a water bottle? Do you need to buy a gym membership? Do you need to check out a few gyms? Do you need to find daycare? Do you need to find a backup daycare for when that original daycare isn’t able to watch your child for whatever reason?

What are all of the things that you need to take care of and plan out in order to reach your goal? Those are the things that are part of your action plan. The action plan that you schedule into your week, each week. You need an action plan of the steps that you need to take in order to schedule those items into your week.

And then of course, like we talked about earlier, schedule it into your week. Put it in your calendar every Sunday. Sit down, plan out your week. Plan out the steps that you need to put into your calendar from your action plan and take a little time to evaluate the things that are working and the things that aren’t working at this time. Make any changes that you need to make, any alterations.

Schedule and evaluate.

So to recap, how not to forget your goals.

• Step one: Make sure your goals are aligned with your vision.
• Step two: Create an action plan.
• And step three: Schedule and evaluate your goals weekly.

If you do that, these three things, you will never forget your goals. Those three steps actually pertain to a lot of problems with achieving goals. So the next problems we’ll go through fairly quickly.

What if you are no longer able to achieve your goal, or it’s become irrelevant? This can happen for many reasons. But don’t keep working on a goal that is no longer relevant to you. Don’t feel like you have to accomplish a goal that no longer is serving you.

Many times during your personal development journey, as you start growing and learning, you’ll find a lot more clarity concerning what your vision is and what your purpose is.

So this can change or alter the goals that you have. You may need to pivot or tweak your goals. You may need to just chuck them. And that’s okay. Get rid of them. If they no longer serve you, don’t feel guilty about it. Don’t feel bad. Just take a little time and pick a new goal. Pick a new goal for that area of your life.

Another problem might be that you hate your goal. And there’s two parts to this. If you actually hate or end up hating what you’re working on or what your goal is, you need to step back and really think about whether or not this goal is important to you. Make sure that it’s aligned with the vision you have for your life.

And the second part to hating goals is sometimes it’s simply how we’re going about achieving our goal that we hate. We might need to brainstorm some ideas to change our action plan.

For instance, if your goal is to lose 20 pounds this year, you have a gym membership, you go certain days of the week for a certain amount of time and you find you just dread going there. You dread that time. Ask yourself why. This might be a simple fix instead of quitting on your goal. Try to find a solution to the problem.

Maybe you would feel more comfortable exercising outdoors or at home. Or doing a different type of exercise. Check your environment, check the steps that you’re taking. Think of different things that you can try in order to hate it less. I mean really. Who, who really likes to exercise? I mean, I know there’s some people out there that claim they do, but most of us really don’t enjoy the exercise.

The more in shape you get though, and the more you do exercise, and the stronger you become, the easier it becomes. And it does actually get a little bit more enjoyable. But really look at your environment.

If you are really enjoying the comradery of the gym and you really like the motivation that you get from that, then that’s one thing. But there’s a lot of us that, you know, are self-conscious or more introverted that really feel uncomfortable going out in a public place like a gym and working out in front of other people. That’s all right. You don’t have to work out at a gym.

Find what works for you. Try different things. Just keep moving, keep going forward.

The next problem is lack of motivation. Well, when you begin anything, it’s very motivating. And then a little while down the road, you find that you’re really having to kick yourself in the butt to get things done. Because you’re no longer feeling motivated.

This would be a good time to switch things up, do something a little different. One of my goals for the year is to finish my book. And sometimes I get really tired of sitting in the same spot, doing the same thing day after day, writing, writing, writing. So I like to switch things up to keep me motivated, to keep me moving forward. Sometimes I’ll write outside. Sometimes I’ll go to the library. Sometimes I go to a café.

With my exercise goals, sometimes I’ll switch things up and go for a hike or go swimming. Just something to break the monotony. If your goal is somewhat of a monotonous type of goal, where you’re doing the same thing over and over and over again, it’s sometimes easy to get discouraged with that. So switch things up a little bit. That will help keep you motivated.

If the reward system works for you, figure out some rewards every so often. Once you’ve accomplished certain things you get the reward. Some people are more motivated to keep on track with their goals if they know that they’re going to have to do something they don’t like. If they don’t get the work done that they need to get done each week. So figure out what works for you and implement some of those things into your plan.

Maybe accountability is something that will help motivate you. Having an accountability partner sometimes can be really great. And with finding an accountability partner, don’t get hung up on it being someone that is doing the same thing you are necessarily.

Sometimes if you can find someone that’s just really good at motivation, really good at keeping you accountable to the things that you’re committed to each week, that can be a better accountability partner than someone that’s struggling with the same type of goal that you are. So think outside of the box a little bit.

It looks like we have time for one more problem to go over. I know there’s many more that some of you have probably dealt with, but like I said earlier, if you need help with a specific problem, just send me an email. Send it to jc@expandyourlifepodcast.com and we’ll see if we can figure out a solution together.

So this last one we’re going to talk about is probably the one I hear about the most. It’s the one that everyone seems to struggle with. And that is not enough time.

If you struggle with not having enough time, the first thing I’d recommend is to do a time audit on it on your life. Many of us think that we don’t have enough time, but in reality, we are wasting quite a bit of time.

Every time I feel like I do not have enough time to get things accomplished, I do a time audit and I can guaran-damn-ty you that every time I feel like I don’t have enough time, it’s because I’m wasting time somewhere.

After you do a time audit, be sure to check out episode 39, where we’re going to talk about planning your week.

Planning your week is going to free up a lot of time. So be sure to check out that episode. If you have done the time audit and you have started planning your week and you still feel like you don’t have enough time to work on your goals, look at your goal.

Maybe it would be a good idea to trim things down a little bit. Break things into smaller steps. Look at your action plan. If you’re overwhelmed because you’re putting too much on your plate at one time, step back, rethink your plan and schedule smaller steps into your week. And as you move forward and gain momentum, it might make it easier for you to add-on as you go.

But don’t get stuck on the due date.

I would rather you change your due date to a later date, take smaller steps toward your goal and actually achieve it. Sure. It might take a little longer, but you’re going to achieve it. Instead of getting overwhelmed by cramming too much into too little of time. The key is to continue moving forward.

Anytime you’re overwhelmed or stressed out about your goal, you’re going to end up quitting. Step back, mix smaller steps in your action plan and continue moving forward each week. When you do your weekly evaluations and planning, you can re-assess what you can and can’t handle and make any changes necessary.

Then also a good thing to look at when it comes to time, figure out what your priorities are. When you look at your results from your time audit, you’re going to see what your priorities in life are. What you’re putting before other things.

And if watching 12 to 14 hours of TV every week is something that is moving you forward in life, then by all means, continue to do so. But I really doubt it. Sure, we all need downtime. Sure, we all need to catch up on the latest episode of whatever your favorite show on Netflix might be right now. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But be real about what you’re prioritizing.

Heck, there was a time when I freed up two hours a week just by setting a timer every time I went on Facebook so I didn’t get sucked down rabbit trails. It is so easy to do on social media. Set a timer. When you do your time audit, you’ll be amazed at some of the things that you’ll find that you spend a lot more time than you realized on.

And the last thing I want to say about not having enough time, stop saying those words.

If you keep telling yourself, you don’t have enough time. If you keep dwelling on the fact that you don’t have time to accomplish all the things that you need to get done each week, you are not going to have time. That’s just the way it works.

Every time that thought comes into your mind, re-focus it to a new thought. I have the perfect amount of time each week to get the things done that I need to get done. Just re-focus that “I don’t have enough time”, to something like that. Every time that you think it. And not only will you start thinking differently, but you are going to have more time. It works. Do a little experiment.

All right. I think that about wraps it up for today. We’ve covered an awful lot I know. Let’s see. Don’t forget to check back for episode 39 for planning your week. And the other episode that I mentioned will be episode 48, where we’re going to go over creating a vision and purpose for your life.

Next week, we’re going to talk about change. I think that’s really relevant right now. A lot of us are going through a whole lot of change and it can be pretty traumatic. And you can really get stuck in a negative place if you’re not careful. So we’ll talk a little bit about that next week.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so that you’ll get updates and notifications when new episodes are released. Have a great week. Bye for now.