VIDEO: How to Achieve Any Goal!
with Lindsey Turnbull
*Editor’s Note:* This video is from December 2018. The full text has been edited to include only the “evergreen” goal-setting advice! The text containing information about holiday markets has been edited out. If you’d like to read the full text of this video, please reach out using the Contact tab!
Hello! Lindsey here, the owner of MissHeard Media- a company that empowers and emboldens tween and teen girls to be smart, savvy, and global through our international community blog and skills-building live events. I promise to cool it with the puns- but it has been a wild [2018], from losing and rebuilding the WHOLE MissHeard site to doing a wildly successful Kickstarter and creating our first product: the Girl Powered Planner.
OK. So, this week, I wanted to talk about goal setting in 2019. As you may have heard, goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. But what does that mean? Let’s break this down looking at my big goal for 2018.
This year, I really wanted to do something with girls and history again. My background is in history and I was really missing “doing” history. OK, so that’s a goal, but it’s not a very SMART one.
Inspired by another planner I received as a gift, I thought it’d be fun to do an “On This Day” planner, but of girls history. Better, now my goal is specific: create a planner. If I’m going to create a planner, I needed to create a deadline. I set a deadline of August that would give me time to research, create the planner, raise funds, hire a designer, and pitch the planner to stores.
Now, creating a girls/women’s history planner by August is a SMART goal!
But that’s a HUGE undertaking- something that seems so big, I almost hesitate to start.
From there, I could break down the goal into smaller tasks: I researched girls and women by the decade and plotted them onto a calendar. I decided to do a Kickstarter to raise money, which was a big undertaking on its own. I made a back up plan in case we didn’t make the goal. I vetted and hired our fab designer, Abbey. Once we had the money, I researched printers and costs. It was a HUGE project, each step taking five to ten more steps to complete. This is true of many goals! If your goal is to get a certain grade in a class, you might need to create a study schedule, make flash cards, meet with your teacher, etc.
I am so, so happy that the project worked out and is complete! But, while it was happening, there were so many times I wanted to quit. It was too much work, I was going to leave something important out, it’d be full of typos, the printing costs kept rising… (To be fair, I *did* unknowingly leave people out and there are typos.)
But the whole time- and this is important with any goal- I was constantly visualizing how great it’d feel to finish the planner. I wrote letters to my future self, to the planners, to the girls that would receive them as gifts, writing out how great it would be. I even cleaned a space around my desk where the boxes would go. Visualizing is a brain trick. By giving your brain the wonderful feeling of accomplishment, it tricks your brain into working towards that goal, even when you’re not thinking about it.
The other thing that is important to me is to remember why you’re chasing this goal. For me, history motivated me. I love history, I love looking at primary sources, putting them into context, meeting the historical actresses. I want to share that passion and that knowledge with others. I didn’t really get into history until late in high school- maybe sharing my passion and what I was learning with others could inspire another girl to look at history with affection and fascination, rather than disdain.
Every time I wanted to give up, I thought about that desire, that pride of creating something that reflected so many of my passions.
To me, that’s the real key to achieving your goals: remember the why. Yes, make sure the goal is SMART. Remember the why. The reason you WANT the goal will keep you motivated when it gets tough, or exhausting.
Tell me a goal you’d like to reach for 2019! Reach out on social media @MissHeardMedia on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
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