2025 March 18 Goals to thrive by

You can view the original LIVE on Facebook here.

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me today to talk about goals. Let's get started!

If you like what you hear today, please leave a like, subscribe, tell your friends, or send me a message. I appreciate you being here tonight to talk about goals—special goals—because these are just for you.

If you're watching the replay, this was recorded on March 18, 2025. As you may recall, there were many important but distracting events happening in the U.S. and worldwide during this time. We won't cover all of them, except for the war in Ukraine, which we discuss every week. The likelihood of getting distracted from our own personal goals is quite high.

When that happens, we tend to feel stressed and overwhelmed because the things that matter to us—our plans and priorities—are being disrupted. Obviously, world events are important, but one of the dilemmas in life is that we all have to navigate multiple parallel spheres at the same time.

You may be concerned about politics or the news, but that doesn’t mean you don’t still have to feed your family, take care of your pets, pay the bills, and handle all the other responsibilities of daily life. That balance is often a major source of stress for many people. And this is exactly why goal setting is so important.

There are internal and external events that demand our attention. We have to be careful about worrying too much about external events that, in reality, we're not going to act upon. Recall that we recently put up the website where you could find your congressional representatives, for example. That was so you could reach out to them and act on your own behalf or have them act on your behalf for situations that were important to you.

Or, stated another way, that action was consistent with one or more of your personal goals. And now we can see the tie-in between goals, reducing stress, and avoiding overwhelm. If an external event is truly important to you, then it should be one of your personal goals. If it's just a distraction that you aren't going to act upon, then you should try to set it aside until it becomes one of your important goals or until you realize it just isn’t important in your life.

So how do we set goals? You may recall we've talked about SMART goals in the past. SMART goals are specific, meaning they are clearly defined. Not a general goal like, "Oh, I want to go on a trip," or "I want to take a trip to some place at some point," but something more concrete. They're measurable, so you know when you've actually reached them. Instead of saying, "I want to lose weight," you say, "I want to lose ten pounds." That way, if you're at nine pounds, you haven't quite reached your goal, and if you're at eleven pounds, you've exceeded it. They're achievable. You can't say, "I want to lose 200 pounds" if that's not realistic for you. Or if you're older, like a lot of my listeners, you probably can't say, "I want to run a four-minute mile."

If you can, more power to you. But they have to be achievable and actionable. It has to be something you can really act upon. They have to be relevant but also a bit of a reach. A relevant goal is something that, like we said, has to be something you can actually attain. A reach goal, though, is something that may not be easy—maybe you can’t run a four-minute mile, but you can work toward running a six- or seven-minute mile. It’s possible, but it’s challenging.

And they have to be time-based. In other words, there has to be a deadline. Saying, "Well, I’m going to make an extra thousand dollars" isn’t enough. If you give yourself the rest of your life, who knows when you’ll actually get around to making it? So instead, you need to say, "I want to do it within a specific time frame."

That’s it. An effective goal contains all these elements, but we’re not going to try to cover everything tonight. We’ll do this in two or three episodes. Tonight, we’re just going to focus on the first item, which is being specific.

A lot of people make their goals impossible to complete because they never actually define what the goal is. I mean, you wouldn’t take a trip and just say, "Well, I’m going on a trip." Where are you going? "I don’t know." Did you get there? "Well, I guess I did." And sure, sometimes it’s fun to do something like that, where the experience itself is the goal. But if you’re actually planning a trip, you need to have some idea of your destination.

So, imagine your goal is to make more money. You picture yourself retiring to a beach resort. Then your boss offers you a 25-cent-an-hour raise. Well, technically, you've met your goal—you’re making more money. But that’s not really what you wanted at all. A few extra dollars a week isn’t going to get you to a beach resort to retire on.

The problem, which is obvious in this example, is that we didn’t set a specific goal. It was too general, too open-ended, where at almost any point, we could either declare victory or decide the goal wasn’t attainable—because we never actually defined what the goal really was. You can come up with plenty of similar examples.

"I want to lose or gain weight." Well, how much? "I want to have more time to myself." How much? How often? When? There are so many goals like this. The common theme is that they’re vague statements, and we can never determine when we’ve actually reached them. And while it may seem obvious when we break it down like this, how many times have you heard someone say, "Oh, I want to lose some weight," and then complain because they didn’t reach their goal? Or, "I want to take a trip." Where to? "I don’t know."

Well, if they take a trip to the next town, technically, they’ve achieved their goal. Or if they take the trip of a lifetime, that also qualifies. Without specifics, the definition of success is unclear. That’s why you have to add specificity—something concrete so you know when you’ve actually reached your goal.

The first and most important step of goal setting is to be very specific about what you want to achieve. "I want to lose 15 pounds." "I want to increase my income by 20%." "I want to travel for at least one month each year." "I want to volunteer overseas for six months in a row." Whatever it is, you have to define clear boundaries for your goal so you know when you’ve truly attained it.

Because otherwise, your mind doesn’t know what to do to get you there. But if you give it a clear set of criteria to work toward—remember, we talk about this a lot—your mind will figure out how to make it a reality. If you say, "I want to volunteer overseas for six months in a row," your mind isn’t going to waste time considering opportunities that are only one month long or require a minimum two-year commitment.

Instead, it will always be on the lookout for something that aligns with your goal. That’s why goals have to be specific. Your mind is incredibly creative—it will remember people who can help you, recall past conversations, and recognize situations that can move you forward. But if you don’t give it anything concrete to work with, there’s nothing it can do.

Each goal has to be clearly defined so you can easily tell when you’ve reached it. You either achieve what you set out to do, or you don’t. And just as importantly, you can track your progress along the way. Without a specific goal, it’s easy to fool yourself into thinking you’re making progress when you’re not.

For example, if you say, "I want to take a trip next year," and start looking up destinations, reading travel blogs, or researching flights, you might feel like you’re working toward your goal. But if you never take the next step—booking a ticket, setting a budget, making a concrete plan—then you’re no closer to actually going on that trip than if you had done nothing at all.

So, the very first step is to set a specific goal. Now, remember, the other SMART steps are measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based. All of these steps work together, each playing a role in making your goals a powerful tool that keeps you on track toward your vision. Carefully crafting your vision is a whole other important topic, which we’ll cover another time.

But even before your final vision is fully defined, you usually have some things you want to accomplish, and SMART goals are effective even if you haven’t figured out your complete vision yet. We’ll talk more about that when we get back together, next week or the week after. Because SMART goals are just one step in the larger process of recreating and re-envisioning your life.

You have somewhere you want to go, you define the steps to get there, you follow along, and you check your progress. But for tonight, I just wanted to focus on the very first step in staying on track. In reality, it’s a complex world filled with distractions. Good goal setting will help you start your journey toward reducing stress and overwhelm. It replaces those with an actionable plan, customized just for you, helping you feel more in control and ensuring that you’re making progress on the things that matter most. 

So that’s it for the evening. Your homework tonight is to think about some of the goals, big or small, that you may have set for yourself. Then think about whether your goals are specific or general. If they’re general, how could you turn them into something very specific that you’ll know you’ve attained, with a clear path to get there? Extra points if you revisit that goal and imagine how you’ll know when it’s really reached. What was the target, how would you know, and when would you know? This will give you a head start on some of the next steps for next week.

Thank you very much for joining me. Please remember the many wars in Ukraine and the ongoing situations in various areas of the world. There's a lot of political and social unrest going on. Please check out our updated page and links to UKR7.com, where you can donate to support the people of Ukraine. There are also issues happening in the Middle East, Africa, and other places.

World Central Kitchen, at WCK.org, is another great organization we talk about a lot. They operate globally, and wherever there’s a disaster, they’re usually one of the first on-site, helping get basic services and food to people in need. Chef José Andrés and his team at WCK are doing great work. 

Working to help others in need is so important. If you're not interested in donating to a large multinational or international organization, there are always local opportunities. And if you're not in a position or mindset to donate right now, remember that one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. That can start with something as simple as a smile.

If you see someone who looks like they’re having a rough day, or even someone who looks like they're having a great day, make their day even better. You don’t have to go around looking for everyone to be miserable. Just say, "Hi, good morning." A lot of people put on a public face, but inside, they may not be very happy.

As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along. Please subscribe and hit the like button. If not, drop me a comment about what you'd like to hear. Have a great week, and remember to live the life you’ve dreamed of because that’s the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com.