Welcome back to our series to the kick-off of 2024 with intentional goals and creating your vision board. In this episode, we talk about how to set up your goals this year to be markers that you are on the right path throughout your journey. Your goals should be tools and NOT the end-all-be-all. I share my process in creating aligned goals to help you manifest your ideal year.
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Shop our apparel! --> Love Your Body Now
Follow us on Insta: @loveyourbodynow.podcast
Welcome back to our series to the kick-off of 2024 with intentional goals and creating your vision board. In this episode, we talk about how to set up your goals this year to be markers that you are on the right path throughout your journey. Your goals should be tools and NOT the end-all-be-all. I share my process in creating aligned goals to help you manifest your ideal year.
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Shop our apparel! --> Love Your Body Now
Follow us on Insta: @loveyourbodynow.podcast
Before we get into today's episode, I want to share a special announcement that we are doing with the Love your Body Now brand. As you may know, we launched an Etsy shop a few months ago just to test out some items that we wanted to create for the brand and represent our community. So if you've gone and explored on the Etsy shop, you may have seen some popular sayings like growing in progress, love your Body Now. I Defined my Dream Body. We have those on t-shirts, sweatshirts, stickers. If you haven't checked that out, be sure to go check that out. However, with the new year approaching, we wanted to launch a few new items to our shop, specifically on our own website. So we are opening up our own website with our own items to launch in there, and they are for the people who are going into 2024 and want to have the mindset of this is my year, but I want to do it the right way, right. We've all gone into the new year before with the New Year's resolution focusing on weight loss, focusing on trying to get back into our fitness routine, and these sweatshirts are perfect for you if you are looking to go into the new year with a positive mindset and one focused on self care and becoming the best version of yourself. I think that you are going to love these items if that is what you are focused on for the year of 2024. We are launching three new sweatshirts as of right now and they are embroidered sweatshirts. So if you have been on the Etsy shop, you know that we don't have any embroidered items. So we are super excited to launch these, and we actually had a few friends of mine who were willing to order these ahead of time, kind of test out the product and also represent the products to be featured on our Instagram pages and our website, and we've got nothing but great feedback. Everyone loves them. They say they are so cute. So I think that you're really going to love these items and if you haven't seen them yet already, be sure to go to the link in the show notes and check them out and make sure you get your orders in before the New Year so that you can wear them into the New Year of 2024.
Speaker 1:Alright, let's get into today's episode. Welcome to the Love your Body Now podcast, the podcast for women who are ready to feel confident in their body right now and redefine what health looks like for them. I'm Savannah, your host, and together we'll be having conversations about what it means to accept and love our bodies now, while simultaneously prioritizing our health journey. We'll be debunking beliefs that do not serve us and diving into misconceptions and unhealthy narratives in the fitness world, so that we can rebuild our foundation from a place of self love. Hello, welcome back to the Love your Body Now podcast. If you are new here, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast, and if you are a regular listener, thank you so much for coming back.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited because I am recording today with a new microphone, like a legit microphone, and it's so funny because for the longest time I couldn't figure out like what the heck? I can't even use it correctly because I always see the podcasters with these like big headphones on and then they have their microphone and I was told from some friends who podcast that like you need the headphones to hear how your audio sounds and I was like I don't get how that works. And here I am, like trying to figure it out and I've got my headphones plugged in and I'm like I tried to start, like I tried to start the episode and I'm like I can't even hear myself talk that this I'm not going to be able to record with these headphones on. And then I like put two and two together and I'm like, oh my gosh, does it have a plug in into the microphone? And it does. So I finally figured it out that I needed to actually record my plug in my headphones into the microphone. And now it's it's doing what it needs to do. This is going to feel kind of weird at first and like trying to get used to it, but I'm super excited. I am like double recording. So I'm also recording on my phone and I'm just going to see how it turns out for using the content on social media. So we are, we are getting up there in the world. But anyways, let's jump into the episode. Today I am feeling much better than I was last week. I was sick and like could not hardly talk without having to cough, so I really feel like I wasn't super into the episode and felt like I needed to cut it short.
Speaker 1:But if you have been tuning into this series, we are talking all about how to set up your 2024 goals with the right process and intentional like thought in mind, because I've been sharing a little bit about what I did last year during this time to basically create my goals and my vision board for 2023. And how I've been able to manifest and achieve so many different things into my life for this year that I could not have even imagined and, like that, I didn't know how I was going to achieve. And I feel like a lot of that has to do with the intention behind what I did during this time of year to set the goals for 2024. And I really just I'm going through it again this year. I'm being super intentional. I have a lot of different things that I want to experience in 2024. And so I am trusting that this process is going to work again and I thought why not share my process with you in a series?
Speaker 1:And that way, if you are looking to set super intentional goals for 2024 and you want to make a vision board and you want to have, like, obviously, some attention behind it and really like, manifest those things into your life, then you need to follow this process. So this is the third episode, if you haven't listened to the other two episodes. Obviously those are foundational and you need to make sure that you spend time with those two things first before we jump in to what we're going to talk about today, which is how to actually set up your goals for 2024, and set them up in a way that is super intentional and really is like making sure that you are setting yourself up for success. And then, obviously, we're going to use these goals that we set to basically fuel our inspiration when it comes to creating our vision board. So it doesn't ever I see this happen all the time like people like just throw up stuff on their vision board, like from Pinterest, that they're like oh, that's like a pretty aesthetic, like, oh, that looks nice, like, oh, I should have this on there, because I've seen other people put it on there and it really doesn't have any kind of.
Speaker 1:You don't have any kind of like emotional bind to this vision board, and that's where a lot of people go wrong is you're not even connected to your vision board. Maybe you're not even really connected to your goals, and then somehow we expect to be able to achieve these things and manifest these things into our life and, you know, make sure that we're taking action every single day to get closer to those goals. So it doesn't. It doesn't work like that, like you really do need to be intentional and I say that I've learned from other people and that's kind of where I adopted my process is. I've actually read a book before and I've listened to other people who teach on their podcasts and stuff, but I remember reading a book that taught how to create a vision board and like she just has like achieved so many different things on her vision board, like big, big things, that a lot of people would probably be like feel stupid for putting on their vision board. And so I've learned from a lot of people who are really great with mindset and being super intentional and really just being super abundant and having that mindset. So that's why I want to pay it forward and talk about it and how I'm, how I'm setting up these goals for 2024.
Speaker 1:So, to quickly reflect on the last two episodes so last week we talked about the power of manifestation and having an abundant mindset and how to apply that with the like, basically how we want to feel in 2024, like the things that we want to feel in our day to day and basically going over the different areas of our wellness. Obviously, I want you to apply this to your health and fitness journey, but, like we also talked about how it can apply to your financial wellness and your relationships and your career. So really going deep with yourself to understand how you want to feel about these things, like how how you want to wake up feeling every single day when it comes to all of these different areas of your wellness. And the only way to really understand that about yourself first is by reflecting on this past year. What has worked for you, what didn't work for you, what are things that you wanted to achieve that you didn't? What are things that you wanted to achieve that you did? What are things that came into your life that you weren't expecting?
Speaker 1:So that was really what we talked about in the first two episodes was the power of reflection and really sitting with it and just like analyzing it and trying to understand it so that we can use that to take our next step forward into 2024 and really know and understand ourselves, like what we've learned about what we want, what we've learned about what we don't want, right, like and and being okay with the fact that there may be some things in 2023 that we didn't achieve, that we wanted to and we said we were going to and we didn't, and maybe we've just realized that we no longer want that thing anymore and that's okay, like we don't. We're always changing and we don't have to want. We don't have to want the same things when we Maybe learn a little bit more about ourselves or we've experienced it and realized that it's not for us, that's completely okay and that's the whole purpose behind Doing that, taking the time to do that before we even set up our goals for 2024. So, after you've gone through both of those, you hopefully will have what you've written down, maybe in a journal of some sort, talking about the different areas of your wellness and just like what you've reflected on for 2023 and Learned about, maybe what didn't work for you, what did work for you, why things didn't work out the way you thought, and You'll have all of that in front of you as you're moving forward to set your goals for 2024.
Speaker 1:So let's start by thinking about, let's say that you want to set a goal when it comes to your health and fitness, and we want to make sure again, if that you've taken the time to Really talk about how you want to feel when it comes to your health and fitness, and I think the example that I used last week was that we, let's say you are someone who really wants to listen to your body more and you want to Cater your exercise routine to your cycle of like whichever cycle that you're in throughout the month, and that's that's really how you want to Structure your workout plan is that way You're not necessarily going to want to set a goal that is like, okay, I'm gonna lose 20 pounds, like when you go to set up your goal, you want it to be on the same path as the direction of how you want to feel and, obviously, you want this goal to be measurable and you want to know that you've achieved it when you have achieved it. But you also want it to be like super aligned with that what you had defined of your health and fitness, like how you defined you want it to be into your life. And this is where it can kind of be challenging to maybe let go of maybe the societal norms, of maybe what we feel like we should be setting as a health and fitness goal, or what we've set in the past before, or what other people expect of us. This can literally be anything that inspires you and is Like feels like, perfectly aligned with what you are looking to do and I've gone in depth in episodes of how to really properly set up your goals and I teach something called the craft method. This is my sign signature method of how I teach how to set up goals. So if you really want to like dive into how to like properly set up goals, you can go back and listen to that episode to really understand the process of setting up a goal with a lot of intention and but like as you're setting up this goal. Let's say that you Say that you want to set up this goal to Obviously, like, if you're trying to be more flexible in your health and fitness and you're trying to structure your workouts to Cater to your cycle, then you would want to make sure that you are actually setting a goal that like makes sense for that right. So an outcome of that, maybe that you would end up feeling more energized throughout your day because you're intentionally listening to your body, and Maybe it would also result in better sleep. And you also have to understand, like when you are Talking or thinking and reflecting on how you want certain areas of your wellness to feel, also like understanding what they do for your life on a deeper level and being super connected with that.
Speaker 1:I know, last year a lot of what I had talked about was like I pretty much Wrote down who the ideal version of me was and how I felt on a day-to-day basis, and then I reverse engineered that. So what I did was I was like I want to feel like the most confident person in the room, right, like I want to feel like my most beautiful version of myself. And then I was like, okay, so if I want to feel that way, what are the areas of my wellness? And like just the daily actions that I need to take on a regular basis that are going to make me feel this way. So Then I broke it down and was like, okay, if I'm going to feel my most confident Self and like show up as that person every single day. That type of person would be taking care of her health regularly, so she would be eating foods that nourish her on a regular basis, avoiding highly processed foods. I would be exercising on a regular basis and like increasing my energy that way, and Just by increasing my energy, like I'm, I'm leveling myself up that way. So I'm showing up just on my day-to-day at a higher frequency and I To feel that my most confident. I would also be doing things like Getting ready throughout my day, you know, like making my hair look decent, like putting on a little bit of makeup, because, like when I do those certain things, like I feel like more presentable and then that Translates into like the way that I just like Carry myself in general, which is, again, it's going to make me feel more confident.
Speaker 1:So I started breaking it down that way, where I was like, okay, wolf, I'm gonna be my most confident, then that means like I need to regularly be working out and exercising, because if I'm doing that, like I know it leads to me feeling more confident, not just about my body, but like Feeling like I'm taking care of myself, like I've got I've got my back, you know, like I I have the discipline to take good care of myself. Like that just leads to more confidence In my capabilities, so that, and then you know, from there it's like okay. So if I know I need to be like working out regularly, then what do? What does like my workout routine look like? Well, I need to kind of understand. Well, what's my schedule look like. So if I have, if I'm working like a nine to five, then I've got to figure out when I'm going to actually Be able to fit in my workout plan.
Speaker 1:So it's really just about being super connected with, like how you want to show up in the world and like figuring out the things that you need to do in order to Like, feel, like, lead to you feeling that way. So I always like to use the byproduct of these actions that I'm starting to like think about what I need to do and then I'm like okay, what would be like a byproduct of that to where I'm like that could be my goal. Where it's like, it's just like a marker, you know, along the roadmap, it's not like something where I'm like that's the only thing that I'm focused on. So the example could be Okay, like I lose five to ten pounds because I start working out every single day of the week and it starts to become more of a priority for me, then a marker of that would be that I lose some weight and then I could, you know, use that as like okay, check mark, like I'm on the right path. But I see this as like a bigger picture and the goals are just like markers. They're byproducts, they don't. They don't really matter that much like they do, but they don't.
Speaker 1:So what I mean by that is people get so wrapped up in goals and like literally achieving a specific thing, as opposed to just using a goal as Like a marker on the roadmap that you are on towards feeling the way that, like how we described in the beginning, how you want to feel every single day. Right, I use the example of wanting to feel super confident, like. I just want to feel like my most confident self every single day. I want to carry myself with that energy. Okay, then, what are the things that I need to do? Okay, need to do this and you do this and you do this, and one of those being that I needed to prioritize my health and fitness. Well, what does that look like? That looks like me working out every single day before I go to my nine to five, because I want to make sure that I take care of it the first part of my day. It's going to lead to better sleep, is going to lead to better energy, and a byproduct, aka a goal, a byproduct of that would be that I lose five to ten pounds within whatever, like three months.
Speaker 1:And obviously you do want to like keep in mind the timeline of your goals and not put in unrealistic timelines or put like timelines that are like going to take forever and they're just, you know, like they're not going to keep you super intentional and on track, but they are just markers of like okay, I achieve this thing. I know that I'm on the right path, like I'm getting closer every single day to the person that I want to become and like feeling the way that I want to feel on a regular basis, because I defined that early on. I know what success is. I know what it feels like because I've already done the work to describe what it feels like. That's what we talked about in the first two episodes of this series. Like we got super intentional, describing what we really want and how we want to feel on a regular basis, and now we're just setting up goals that are going to be tools to get us closer to that.
Speaker 1:I always tell people not to be super emotionally attached to a goal or to think of it as like a make or break in your success, because the minute you start feeling that way about your goal, the faster it's going to. Like you are just not going to feel satisfied when you achieve that goal, you may feel satisfied for a second or for a couple of days or whatever. But the whole point of goals is to help us become better versions of ourselves and like enjoy that process. And if we can't enjoy the process and we're just so focused on like checkmarking the box and achieving the thing, then we're going to just set ourselves up for disappointment, because that's kind of like leading us down this way of living of like not actually being present and in the moment and being more addicted to achievement and like like reward and Obviously they can have their benefits to them.
Speaker 1:But like I Used to be this way all the time where, like I was so Addicted to like the achievements and like adding it to my, my list of things that I've achieved and Thinking that it would make me feel like I was More worthy or like that I was enough and you know that I was successful or whatever. But like that Really just leaves to like you wanting to chase more and more and nothing, ever feeling like it's enough and that is exhausting. Feeling like Everything that you achieve isn't enough and that you have to just keep going and keep going and keep going. It's just more about the journey. And when we talk about goals and Like talking about the byproduct of what you want to achieve, then you can start to Again reverse engineer that back to what does this look like on a daily basis? If I Lose, if the byproduct or the goal is that I lose five to ten pounds, what do I need to do on A weekly basis to achieve these things? Well, I know I need to be working out every single day. I obviously will need to have a specific workout routine with that, and I'll have to be eating a certain way in order to achieve that.
Speaker 1:But Then you can start to break it down To feel very simple and this is something that I always teach people to do when they're setting their goals is to actually make it feel simple, short and Small, like, basically, like you're doing nothing. I Think that that's a way about our approach then saying like I'm, I'm just like gonna go all in and change everything all at once and do this thing. I think that people can definitely do that, but when it comes to Understanding our behavior and like our psychology, it makes way more sense to implement something on a much smaller scale, to the point where it feels like we're barely making any changes at all, and having a weekly reflection, every single week, like that's something that you have to be super dedicated to doing, is actually reflecting on it and like actually seeing how you did and then implementing it, implementing something else for the following week to add on to it. So here's an example of something that I did for my 2023 goals and vision board. I had set a money goal and the whole idea or, I guess, thought process behind this was like I just want to feel like I am prioritizing my future self financially, and so what I did was I basically said like this is how much money that I want to save by the end of this year, like by December of 2023, I want to have like X amount and savings.
Speaker 1:And I definitely was like realistic about it. Like it wasn't like I just said like oh, I'm going to save like $50,000 by the end of 2023, like that doesn't make any sense. Like I obviously was at the time like, whatever my salary was, I realistically set a goal of like okay, like here's the amount that I want to save by the end of this year. Realistically, I can achieve this, but it's going to be a stretch for me, right? Like it wasn't something that was like oh, this is easily doable. You know, an example of that would be like Okay, I'm going to save like $2,000 or $3,000 by the end of this year. That would have been pretty easy to do. But instead I set a goal that was like this is definitely going to stretch me and like it's going to feel like almost like I can't do it, but at the same time it's going to feel like it is possible if I stick with it the whole year.
Speaker 1:And my thought process also was like, even if I don't achieve this, like let's say that. So the goal was to save. Like the goal was to save $10,000. And I was like, even if I don't achieve this, and let's say I save $8,000, that's still like a fuck ton of money. I mean like to. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, like $8,000 isn't nothing. So it's like this is why I say to never get emotionally attached to your goals, because even if I didn't achieve that, but I saved $8,000. $8,000 is still a lot more than $0 in my savings account or my whatever.
Speaker 1:So that's the whole point of the markers is like did I achieve the goal? Maybe, maybe not. Let's say I, let's say I didn't achieve that goal, but it's like was I on my way to achieving the goal? Yes, $8,000. That that's pretty close to $10,000. Like that's, you were on your way to achieving that goal. You can keep going and you're still on the path that you have, that you created at the beginning of the year, towards that person that you said you wanted to be and like, get closer to becoming and feeling like every single day.
Speaker 1:So that is the whole purpose behind getting super clear on the person that we were looking to become and really sitting with how that would feel to be that person. Like what it would feel like to be that person, and then starting to get super clear on like okay, what are the actions that I need to start taking in order to feel like this person? And that is like the whole idea behind setting our goals for 2024. And again, like I set this money goal and it wasn't like, I'm not super attached to this, this money goal. Like I will not feel disappointed in myself if I don't achieve it. Like that's how unattached I am to the goal.
Speaker 1:I'm more attached to the idea of, like, having a set amount of money that's going towards whatever and making sure that that's becoming a habit of mine and that's just like a part of who I am, because that's the whole idea is, like I'm trying to create a new identity this year and this is what future me needs from, from me. To like have this intentionality of this is the person I'm trying to become. That person that I'm trying to become. Their identity has these types of behaviors, it has these types of habits, and I need to start somewhere in order to get to that point. And the whole idea is to start very small and work your way up towards that to where, again, on a weekly basis, maybe you're doing something small, like you're adding something small to your routine to make it more of a habit and just really establish it.
Speaker 1:Because slowly, slowly, slowly, as you're integrating this into your routine, your identity begins to shift, because it's starting to become a habit, and then your brain is starting to believe that this is just who you are. It's just who you are as a person. But when you do it the other way, where you like basically try to change everything all at once, you're really fighting your identity and I've talked about this in previous episodes like the psychology behind your brain, like needing to be right and always finding proof of like who, like you're, that you're right. And when you are going against the grain of your identity, of like who your brain believes you to be, your brain will, like, almost like, manipulate you into reverting back to like who it believes you are. So that's why you kind of have to be like tricky about it, because it's just your brain's nature to want to. It wants you to do the things that you, on a like, a subconscious level, believe of who you are, even if it's like not who you are, but like your brain believes you to be a certain person, and it's going to be on autopilot all the time. Doing the things that it believes is like aligned with that identity. So if you are literally trying to change who you are, you have to do it in a way that's like on autopilot. It's easy because we're on autopilot like 24, seven, like we don't have to think to do so many of the things, and so if we're trying to implement change, it needs to feel almost effortless in order for us to stick to a long term, because it's going to be put on autopilot all the time. So I hope that that makes sense when it comes to setting up our goals, that, again, these are just byproducts of our daily action and what we are looking to like, who we are looking to become, and it's completely okay if the goal changes. Like if, let's say, you're in the middle of the year of 2024 and you realize that, oh, like this, this isn't. Like I don't want this to be my goal anymore. That's okay. Like, to me, that's a still a win, because you're realizing more and more what matters to you and where you're looking to go with your life and what you're looking to do. So an example of this was at the beginning of 2023.
Speaker 1:I put on my vision board that we were like saving up for a wedding and originally I was thinking that we were going to finally have our wedding because we haven't had one yet. And that was like, okay, like now it kind of feels like now's the time that we start thinking about that. And then we went and like decided that we were going to purchase another home and turn our first property into a rental, and so obviously, like that kind of shifted things for us and was like, well, maybe a wedding isn't a priority again anymore and maybe, like, for us it's no rush on, like when our wedding happens. But it's not like. I look at my vision board and I'm like, oh, that's. You know we didn't, I didn't achieve that. You know, like I didn't my goal Like it, I don't know like. I just don't get that upset about it because it's like I know that that will happen someday.
Speaker 1:But other things came into my life that I couldn't foresee happening when I was making this vision board and I see them as a blessing and they've changed. It's changed our life for the better in a way that, like I, you know, my priorities have just shifted and I'm not emotionally attached to my goals to the point where I feel like I've completely, you know, like I'm a failure and I didn't achieve all the things I set out. It's okay, like things happen, life changes and our priorities shift and that's. There's nothing wrong with that, all right, so we are going to wrap up today's episode.
Speaker 1:I hope that you were excited to set your goals for 2024. You know, I've been so excited about just like dreaming of what the future holds and I'm excited to walk you through my process of making my vision board for the new year. It's it's something that I really look forward to doing, and I say that as I'm like looking at my 2023 vision board and I think it'd be super cool to even make like a 2023, like achievement board or like maybe maybe not call it an achievement board, but maybe call it like a reflection board. I thought about doing that just to have it like documented somewhere that I can go back and see like what, like in a nutshell, like what happened in 2023, and have that just for keepsake forever, you know. And then by the time it's 2030, I can look back and say, oh my gosh, like I remember when these were the things that like were my goal and like I was dreaming about having, and now I'm here and like I couldn't even imagine this happening in my life. So I think there's a lot of power in like the reflection part, piece of it and just like using that as a way to really figure out what you want moving forward and going into 2024. So next week we will talk about the process of making a vision board, what that looks like and the step by step like process that I do and take. That really helped me to like tap into, like my creative and like just like getting to my flow and like find things that really inspire me and like actually match up with my goals and like the things that I'm trying to manifest into the rest of the year. So I hope that this episode was helpful and I hope you tune into next week's episode and I will chat with you later.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. You have no idea how grateful I am to have you as one of the love your body now listeners. If you are loving this podcast, it would mean the world to me if you subscribed and left a review. This helps me get the message out to more women just like you, who are also committed to their journey. And if you love this episode, please be sure to share it with someone who you know needs to hear today's message. Together, we can help more women recognize their self worth and build their confidence from a much deeper place, just like you're doing right now. Let's help change the world, one woman at a time. Alright, talk to you soon, friend.