Paisley: Hi, everybody, Paisley imperfect again. And today I
want to talk about something that I mean, frankly, I'm not
very good at. It's something that I've wanted to be good at
for a long time. I'm just not very good at it. I want to talk
about setting goals.
Bear with me for a minute, don't cringe don't leave.
I think. So for me. I remember them teaching us early on, in
like my young women's classes, right? Personal progress was all
about was all about progressing personally. That's why it was
called personal progress. It was about setting goals and
achieving the goals and how to set goals and how to move
forward with your goals. And so I remember just kind of being in
young women's and having people be like, well, what are your
goals for the year and just being like, yeah, I don't, I
don't know. And having my leaders encouraged me to set
goals. And the program even had some already pre made goals for
me, right? I don't remember exactly what they were. But
there were a couple of things that you should do under every
value, every one of the young woman values, there were a
couple of pre written goals, things that you could achieve
and work on. And those were awesome. Those are easy. Those
were things that I could, or not all of them were easy, but they
were things that I could check off.
But when it came to creating my own and setting my own goals, I
always felt like setting my goals. I always felt like my
goals were dependent on someone else. And that was always really
frustrating because I just didn't feel like I felt like if
I had to count on somebody else, it was gonna fail. And I think
I'm afraid of failure. I don't like to fail. It sucks. I don't
like the way it makes me feel.
And then, years ago, my husband was Scoutmaster in our ward for
like eight years. And he came across this way of goal setting
within the Boy Scout organization called SMART goals.
And I remember him sharing them with me and being super excited
about it. Because I don't think the neither one of us were super
good at setting goals and then following through with them.
Also, the writing it down part just makes it a little too.
Maybe it's a little too real. It definitely makes me accountable.
And assuming I can actually find where I wrote it down at the end
of the year, or at the end of the term for which I have set
the goal. Assuming I can find where I wrote it down. It sets a
level of expectation of myself. Did I actually do it? Did I
follow through?
So anyway, I've never been really good at it. But as I've
been thinking more and more about the things that I want to
accomplish, the things that I'm hoping that we are accomplishing
together, I've been thinking more along the lines of a SMART
goal, I need something measurable, how am I going to
know that I'm getting better at finding happiness? How am I
going to know that I am getting better? Or that I'm becoming
more like my savior? How am I going to know these things? And
so I started thinking about that. And I did a quick search
for some quotes on the church's website about setting goals. And
I came across some really interesting stuff I've got, I've
got a few that I'll share today, I came across some really
interesting things that I want to share. The first one being
from elder Packer. So quick confession and a little bit of a
tangent.
I don't know about you, but I frequently. I think I take for
granted the apostles and the prophets that we have until
they're gone. So President Packer I remember as a young
adult, every time he would speak in conference, I would just be
like, Oh, because I never felt like I understood what he was
saying. It wasn't until he passed away and I got smarter
that I started to truly understand what he was saying
some of the things that he was saying he was an educator, his
whole life. He was an educator. And so he was it was always
about teaching somebody that also made him really smart and
he used words that were too big for my little brain. And so I
had just had a really hard time understanding him but what He
said He said this in 1986 actually in a talk called Little
children, he said true doctrine, understood, changes attitudes
and behavior. And there's another famous quote from him in
that talk that I'll let you go find yourself. But it has to do
with. It has to do with. Studies have behavior.
Anyway, it's super interesting, true doctrine, understood
changes attitudes and behavior. And so when I read that, in
relation to setting goals, I was like, oh, so my goal is to
understand true doctrine, so that it can change my attitude,
and change my behavior. Because if I change my attitude, that's
when I start to find happiness. And when I change my behavior,
that's when other people start to find happiness, or that's how
I help them find happiness.
And then I started thinking about the SMART goals again, and
I was like, okay, so how do I write a SMART goal? And I'll get
into a little bit more detail on what a SMART goal is? How do I
write a SMART goal that will push me to understand true
doctrine? How do I write a SMART goal? So I went and I looked,
just to give myself a refresher on what a SMART goal is. And
SMART is an acronym. It stands for specific, measurable,
achievable, relevant, and time bound.
So sorry, another tangent, just things as they're popping into
my brain. I've tried setting goals in lots of different ways.
As a professional I've set goals, I've set SMART goals.
I've tried KPIs. KPI stands for key, key performance indicator.
I've tried OKRs objectives and key results. And all these three
different ways. And I'm sure that there have been more, these
three different ways of goal setting of these three different
ways. SMART goals seems to be the one that works the best for
me. OKRs, I always felt like that objective was just a little
too far outside of my reach. And for me, that's not motivating.
If I know I'm not going to achieve the goal, I'm not going
to try. It's a it's a useless goal for me.
It's not that way for everybody else. So if you would rather go
with an OKR, or a KPI, by all means, please go with it. The
point is, when you set a goal, you have to be able to measure
it. Because if you can't measure it, how do you know if you've
achieved it? If there's no indicator, if there's no key
results, if there's no measurable? How do you know when
you're done? How do you know that you got where you were
trying to go? So whichever method works best for you, by
all means, please use that method. For me, I'm gonna go
with the SMART goals.
So smart, again, specific, measurable, achievable,
relevant, and time bound. So the time bound thing is kind of what
gets me right, like, specific, some of the questions that you
can ask yourself, so is my goal specific. My goal, true doctrine
understood changes attitudes and behavior. There's kind of a
great big goal in there, right to change my attitude and change
my behavior. And in order to do that, I need to understand true
doctrine.
Now, if I'm going to get specific in my goals, some of
the questions that I can ask myself, what exactly do I want
or need to accomplish?
Exactly.
What I need to accomplish exactly, is to understand true
doctrine. That's still a little too vague for me. What true
doctrine am I talking about? What true doctrine was President
Packer talking about?
So then, here's our next quote. This one's from President Luke,
dwarf. Small, steady, incremental changes are the
steps that lead to monumental achievements. Okay, so I'm gonna
break down this smart goal, a little bit more true doctrine,
understood changes attitudes and behavior, understand true
doctrine, to understand true doctrine. I need to figure out
what it is first, what is the doctrine that I'm trying to
understand? We've been talking about this for a few weeks, and
this, this doctrine or these concepts, so doctrine and
concepts are not the same thing. We're getting into some
technical hair splitting here. true doctrine. Doctrine is the
How do I define this? How do I define doctrine? Doctrine is the
gospel of Jesus Christ is at its most basic form. Love God, Love
your neighbor, the 10 commandments, the word of
wisdom. These are the doctrines. Now when I was teaching seminary
years and years ago, we were talking about principles and
principle was the application of doctrine. So if and we would
package is, it was the it was the doctrine package for
application that was the term that we used. So if a principle
is doctrine package for application, then we would take
our seminary students through and say, If then, so if I pick a
commandment, if I tell the truth, Thou shalt not lie,
right? If I tell the truth, then I earn people's trust. So that's
the doctrine package for application. In my case, I'm
trying to understand this true doctrine. So I'm trying to
understand the importance of in this hypothetical, or in this
example that we're using, I'm trying to understand the
importance of telling the truth, being honest, having integrity.
And according to President Uchtdorf, if I take small,
steady, incremental changes towards that, towards that goal,
getting closer and closer to truly understanding that piece
of doctrine, then I can get to a monumental achievement, which is
to understand that true piece of doctrine.
Elder Renlund said, God cares a lot more about who we are, and
about who we are becoming than about who we once were. So I'm
taking president of dwarf small and steady incremental changes
lead to monumental achievements. I'm taking interesting elder
Renlund, that God cares more about who and becoming than
about where I've been.
And now, I'm going to, I'm going to show you this one from Joseph
Wirthlin, Joseph B. Wirthlin, another apostle, I did not fully
appreciate until it was too late. He said, We must be
willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the
life that is waiting for us. So how does this all work together?
Let me come back to these smart goals. Specific, understand true
doctrine, one piece at a time. In order for me to do that, I
need to so here are some more questions under specific,
exactly what do you want or need to accomplish? We talked about
that I want to understand true doctrine. What will be the
outcome?
That one stumps me a little bit? Still, if I'm being completely
honest, what will be the outcome of me understanding true
doctrine? It doesn't stop me because President Packer already
told me my attitude and my behavior will change. So that
will be the outcome.
what will success look like? Success will feel like inner
peace, that stillness that we were talking about throughout
the month of June.
When do you want to accomplish that? Now we're getting more
into timely, right, timely and measurable. So let's hold off on
that one.
Excuse me, why is this something that you want to accomplish? And
why is it important? I want to understand through doctrine,
because I want to find that I want to find and have that
happiness in my life. And I want that for my daughters. I want
for them to be able to understand and see that true
happiness comes through our willingness to follow our
Heavenly Father, and try and become more like our Savior. It
doesn't mean that things are gonna be easy. It doesn't mean
that things are that your trials are gonna go away. We just
talked about that the other day, right? Our trials aren't gonna
go away. But we can find pieces of happiness and feel connected
to our Savior. And that's where joy and peace comes from. Okay,
so those that's the specific What about measurable, by what
date, will you accomplish your goal? I think I'm gonna have to
break down the goals a little bit more. In order to truly say
that. We were let's see, happiness was one we talked
about that the other day. I don't know that I truly fully
understand that little piece of doctrine yet.
There are More. So let's say for a second that I was going to
take on the importance of telling the truth. I'm not. But
to continue on with our hypothetical example. Let's say
that that was the case. So by what date do I want to
accomplish, truly understanding, telling the truth? Well, by the
end of kindergarten, I would hope that was like 100 years ago
in a completely different lifetime. So let's say, I feel
like I'm getting through little pieces of doctrine a little bit
faster. And honestly, this is also why I struggle. This is why
I struggle with setting goals, because I can say that I want to
understand the true doctrine of being honest and having
integrity i want to i, I can say that I want to understand that
by the end of the calendar year, right, December 31, I want to
understand that.
And by December 31, I will have read lots of articles about
telling the truth, I will have read different research studies
about the effect on the brain of, you know, the, between the
difference of telling the truth and telling a lie, I may have
studied lie detector tests and how they work. And like all of
these other things I could have started, I could study in the
next five months, six months. But and so I will have learned
so much and have gotten so much closer.
But this is a lifelong pursuit. So how can I say that I'm done?
This is why I struggle setting goals.
How will you know when the goal has been accomplished? Is there
a specific metric or number you want or need to meet? And how
will you measure progress or success? So can I measure
success differently than saying, I know everything there is to
know about telling the truth, I think I can.
I think instead of setting a goal to say I am going to
understand everything there is to know about telling the truth
between now and the end of December. Instead of instead of
wording the goal that way, maybe what we do is say I am going to
study the importance of telling the truth between now and the
end of December. And by that time, I want to have learned I
want to have learned more about lie detector tests and how they
work. I'm totally making this up.
So between now and the end of December, that's my goal. That's
how much more specific and granular we're getting. So and
then, going back to President Uchtdorf, small and steady,
incremental changes are the steps that will lead to
monumental achievements, if I continue to study. And I
continue to pursue that for the next six months, and then hold
myself accountable at the end of December to go back and say I
learned all of this stuff. And I'm so much more knowledgeable
about it, and then updating the goal, instead of checking it
off.
Maybe that's it. Maybe that's why I'm not such a good goal
setter. Because I feel like I have to check the box at the end
of the goal, in order for in order for it to be considered
successful. Maybe instead of checking the box, it's more of a
progress report. It's more of a progress review of my own. Let's
find out. So smart goals against specific measurable The next one
is achievable. What exactly do you do you need to be able to
achieve the goal? Do you have the skills that you need? Do you
have the time? Do you have access to the resources that you
need? Do you have the support that you need? On a scale of one
to 10? How confident I love this question on a scale of one to 10
How confident are you in your ability to achieve this goal?
And is this goal achievable given the non negotiable daily
demands of your role?
Those are a lot of questions that frankly, have discouraged
me in the past. But I think what this new found, yes, these are
lifelong pursuits. And I don't have to measure success by a
great big, fat green checkmark. I can measure success by
reviewing the things that I've learned in the last six months.
I think we might be onto something maybe I won't be so so
bad at setting goals. Relevant. Okay. So smart, Specific,
Measurable, Achievable, Relevant. I also saw another
post that changed relevant to realistic? And I kind of I like
that. So between relevant and realistic, why is the goal
important to accomplish? We kind of talked about that under
specific, like, why is this important to me? Right? Is the
goal worthwhile? Or are you just spinning your wheels? If so, if
if the goal is worthwhile, why? How does the goal contribute to
the success of yourself? Or your team? In my case, my family?
Does the goal align with the goals of your family? And why?
Why are you working on it now? Is this the right time to work
on this particular goal?
I have a lot of thoughts floating around in my head. I'm
trying to decide which goal I want to start with first,
because my goal is something that I will likely be sharing
with you, my progress will be something that I'm sharing with
you. And so I'm trying to decide I'm trying to figure out what
that goal is going to look like, if I'm going to understand true
doctrine. How many of these specific goals do I need to set
for myself?
I know, see, this is why I am not good at setting goals. I
achieve things. They just aren't specific.
And then the last one, the tee, time bound, how much time do you
need to accomplish the goal? And this is something that I
appreciate with smart goals versus OKRs and KPIs. How much
time do you need versus this is how much time you have? Also
asking yourself in this way, how much time do you need? It gives
you the freedom to get towards the end of that timeframe and be
like, Oh, I think I need a little bit more time for that.
Here's the thing that we have to be careful of, oh, I think I
need a little bit more time for that gives us an excuse not to
work on it. If we, whereas if we set a timeline, if we said, If
we set a due date for ourselves, then we know we have to
accomplish it by that date. And so we push ourselves towards
that date. So we're gonna have to be a little bit careful with
that. I need a little bit more time. And here's why. And then
be honest with ourselves about about those wise, I need more
time because it ended up maybe we go back to that irrelevant
question. It ended up not really aligning with the goals of my
family right now. I had to adjust partway through the year.
Because this happened. Excuse me. I had to adjust partway
through the year because we had something happened in the
family. Or is it more like I had to adjust partway through the
year because I got lazy. Like, Heavenly Father, there's a there
was another. This one's from President Monson. He said, this
was in 2006, in a talk called the joy of the Lord is your
strength. He said, The Lord expects us to accomplish
something.
I'm just gonna go with that simple phrase, that simple
sentence, The Lord expects us to accomplish something. So when we
think about our timeframe, in relation to that, that
statement, also knowing that our Heavenly Father loves us and our
Savior loves us. And they know what our efforts have been.
We've been talking, we've talked about effort. We've talked about
how the Lord loves effort. And so we need to not shortchange
our effort while also not excusing ourselves, for being
lazy. There's a fine line in there. But as humans, we have
the capacity to hold ourselves accountable.
By what date do you want to accomplish accomplish the goal?
Is that realistic? If not, what timeframe would be more
realistic? So think about it that way? How when would you
like to have accomplished the goal? Can you do it by that
amount of time? Do you need to give yourself a little bit more
time or as you're working towards your goal? Maybe you
realize that you're getting through it faster? Maybe you're
getting to it faster, because it's really interesting. And you
just want to keep reading about that one topic or you just want
to keep learning about that one thing or you just want to finish
that one project. That's fine, too. Working through it faster.
We got to start somewhere. When do you want to see progress?
What can you do today, this week, this month, etc to to
progress toward the goal, so setting smaller, more easily
digestible timeframes. This isn't something that and this is
another thing that I really like about the SMART goals method is
is, it's not something that you just write down and say, I'm
going to accomplish this by the end of December, you write it
down. And then you can say, my overall goal I want to
accomplish by the end of December, here are the little
things that I need to do to get there, the tasks and tactics and
all those other things, here are all the things that I need to do
to get there. And I want to have each one of these done by this
particular date, so that I can get to my top level SMART goal.
By the end of December, we can break it down even further.
Okay. I wish I had a goal to share. But right now I only have
why we're trying to set goals. And just I'm going to do a quick
review of these quotes that I shared, I'll make sure that the
resources and everything are posted in the video description.
And then these are these will also be the posts that I put on
Instagram and Facebook, so you'll be able to find them
there, too. The first one, again, was President Packer.
true doctrine understood changes attitudes and behavior.
President Uchtdorf, small, steady incremental changes are
the steps that lead to monumental achievements.
Elder Renlund, God cares a lot more about who we are and about
who we are becoming than about who we once were. It is not too
late to start.
Elder Wirthlin we must be willing to let go of the life we
have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
And then the last one, President Monson, the Lord expects us to
accomplish something.
So now as you go through and you're thinking about your your
goal, maybe you are maybe you're not. Maybe I haven't convinced
you yet of the importance of setting goals. Frankly, I'm not
sure I've convinced myself. Well, I'm gonna give it a shot.
I hope you'll come along with me. As we do this, I want to
just leave with one more quote that today's Today's episode is
very, quote heavy. This one is from President David O McKay.
And he said, we become what we think about.
So maybe this week, this weekend, if I think about being
a goal setter, maybe I'll become one. And then next week, we can
have a goal ready and set and and just sitting there waiting
for me to accomplish it. That's what I'm hoping for. So I'm
going to think about being a goal setter for the next Today's
Thursday. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I then we do our makeup
plan Monday, which those are little mini goals, right? So for
the next four days, I'm going to talk about being a goal setter.
And a goal accomplished her maybe that's better is
accomplished or a word.
A goal reach her. I don't know, I don't know what the term is.
I'm sure there is one. It feels like it's right on the tip of my
tongue. I want to set goals for myself to accomplish by the end
of the year. It's July, it's not too late. Right? It's never too
late. We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned
so as to have the life that is waiting for us. It is never too
late to get started. Thank you for working this out with me.
Let's go set some smart goals and see what we can accomplish
by the end of the year. I really appreciate you being here with
me. And I would I would love to hear what your goals are. Please
feel free to share them. Send them in the comments, send them
to my email, however you want to get them to me, Facebook,
Instagram, send me your goals.
I'm not gonna promise to hold you accountable to them. That's
your job. But we can work on them together. Thank you so much
for being here, you guys. I appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of
your week.