Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
Welcome, or Welcome back to Success with Srini. Today on this podcast episode, I want to share with you a framework through which me, I, and we, on this side approach goals for our clients. But in a one-on-one session or in a coaching, mentoring kind of a setup, how do we approach people’s goals, this is something that I’m sure you’re going to help you. But also, if you are setting goals for your children or for your loved ones, you’re going to give you a perspective also. So I have a dual motive for doing this one, this is going to help you. So you don’t need to really go study, you know, 28 different books on goal setting.
At the same time, it also helps you help your loved ones who may be struggling to set up their own goals. So if you study the goal, literature on goal setting, different philosophies and different authors and all that. But everybody talks about how your goals have to be specific, how they have to be measurable, they have to be actionable, they have to be realistic, and they have to be timely. So they give like, you know, five different things, primarily these five, they predominantly, these are the five things that you got to be careful. That’s why they call it smart goal setting, you might have heard this even in your work set up depending upon what kind of work you are engaged in. But every goal has to at least make the smart processor kind of the smart formula. Now there are seven more things we focus on, or I focus on from my side. When it comes to goal setting, I’m gonna share those seven with you, in addition to the five.
The first one is goals have to be your own, you got to have complete ownership of your goal, something that you have created something with which you can identify yourself with something to which your soul your core can align with. I see people set goals for themselves, that are not their own. They’re setting them for themselves because they saw similar goals being set by their friends, by their extended family relatives, and things like that. Your goal has to be yours. Every time I have seen an unhappy individual, somebody who is filled with resentment, there is no joy, there is no happiness in anything that they’re doing. Every time I’ve seen somebody like that. And every time I’ve studied that individual, I have found that they are living somebody else’s dreams, they’re not living their dream. They are living somebody else’s goals. They’re not living their goals. So if you don’t have a goal that you’re working towards today, right now, at this moment, it means you are working for somebody else’s goals to fulfill, somebody else is accomplishing something bigger at your cost. So amazing how this works. But that is the truth.
So first of all, first and foremost is you’ve got to own your goal, something that you can identify yourself with, I push it hard, sometimes I set goals or have to sleep over them, I need to live with them for some time before I can go any further deep into it. Once I really see that I’m with it. And it is me it’s a part of me it’s part of my being then I move forward.
The second part is goals have to be flexible. Goals shouldn’t be rigid, they are changes you got to make along the way. If you need to modify your approach a bit, the timeline a bit whatever. So there has to be flexibility inbuilt into the goal-setting. Obviously, a goal has to be challenging, it really has to challenge it cannot be a feeling within which you feel you have it in your control. You wake up paranoid, you wake up, I need to get this done. I have no idea how to get this done. Let me work on it. So as I challenge you, at the same time, it should challenge you in a way where it’s exciting you has to bring in excitement otherwise it’s monotonous. Otherwise, it’s like anything else. If it only challenges you then you want to demotivate yourself and you want to drop off. So it has to create the excitement it has to keep the excitement alive.
A goal also has to be aligned. There are so many things that are happening in your life right now. So many things you are a mother, you are a father, you are a husband or a wife, you are a friend, you are a student, you are a worker, you are the boss, you are the creator, you are the consumer, you are a driver. If you are everywhere, everything has to happen. For a day to start for a day to end, everything has to happen in between. So, alignment is an interesting concept. Most people don’t think they don’t align their goals. So if you chase one-off goals, that’s not aligned, because what happens, you’re now sacrificing everything else. I have done that myself. And I know how hard it is. I left everything I wanted to go climb Everest. So that was the goal I was pursuing.
Luckily, it’s not a balanced goal was not a balanced goal by any which means a selfish goal. So let’s talk about balance for a second goal need to be balanced, that will be aligned, but balanced. So how much effort, how much time, how much material, what goes into it, in what proportion, to what extent, so as to be balanced with everything else that’s going on has to be aligned with everything that’s going on. Here is the last thing in this. Of course, there could be more. But these are the only things I’m highlighting right here right now on this podcast episode. Because these are the seven things we push on top of the five.
The last one is a goal has to be supported. either internally or externally, there has to be an element of support to every goal that you set. Most of the time, what I’ve seen people do is set a goal for which they do not have the approval of their loved ones. I’ve done that that mistake, that’s why I’m sharing it with you. The husband signs up for something, the wife has no idea, the wife signs up for something, the husband has no idea. And to set this goal of, for example, weight loss, to set his goal up without taking the approval of the partner with whom they live there 24 hours in the day under the same roof. So you are with someone with whom they are going to share a meal, and you don’t have their approval, or at least their support. Forget about approval support for this goal that you want to accomplish. Weight loss is an area where people lose out because the people with whom they share their feelings are not supporting them. In fact, they’re opposing them. For see, the wife goes home excitingly to the husband, oh, I signed up for this new weight loss program. And the husband responds saying, Ah, you know, you’ve done that so many times, I don’t think you know, I don’t know why you do this. Now all this excitement to bring to take control of life suddenly now completely deflated by someone. So the decision-making process, the goal setting process, they need to be involved. I’m going to do this, what do you think I want to bring in a new approach, I’m going to try a new strategy, I’m going to use a different way of thinking to go after this, even though I have failed 20 times before, I want to do this in a different way.
So now you are enlisting them into your goal. And now they will support you because you know you got them in very early. See goals, people not achieving their goals because they’re not supported. So if you are setting up a goal, a financial goal or a professional goal even doesn’t matter. They need to be supported by the people with whom you share your feelings or you co-exist with these seven points, ownership flexibility, challenging, excitement, alignment, balanced, supported. These are the seven elements on top of that the goals have to be Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and timeline to see how many you can bring into your goal setting. And I’ll tell you one last thing before we wrap this up, please write down your goals. Don’t think them write them down. Either on your computer or on paper ideally in your notebook somewhere that you can go back and refer to please write them down. Don’t think about your goals or ideas when you only think they occupy a very minuscule space in the brain and they go away.
Okay, and for anything in life to happen, anything that you are doing any outcome that you are seeking, in order for an outcome to happen. It has to occupy a bigger space Then the neuron in your brain so it’s better to write it down on paper okay that’s all, for now, you have a wonderful day wherever you are and we will talk tomorrow stay tuned bye now