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Episode Transcription

Welcome back to the Road to Life podcast with Meredith and Craig.

This week we're talking about goals. Wrapping up 2024, looking ahead to 2025.

Setting ourselves up for success. We've got a little process that we have sort of refined over the last few years and we've added a piece to it this year. This year we sort of ended up being at a hotel doing this work, which wasn't our primary reason for the hotel.

But it's really worked out well. So I think it's going to be the newest piece of the puzzle to kind of separate ourselves from our regular daily routine and life.

We just remove ourselves from accessibility. I feel like from the rest of our life, like people and things and responsibilities, we just kind of said, okay, for these few days, we're out of commission and focusing on something completely different.

And so it's allowed us to just be. put the focus where we want right now on looking ahead to 2025, which has been really good.

And I think it also helps give us a different perspective. Like when you're in the details and the logistics and the day to day of your daily life, it's a little bit harder to sort of rise up and get that bigger picture view for the reflection.

Like we talked about in last week's episode the reflection on the lessons on the hard stuff that happened in the previous year. And then pulling the lessons out of that hard stuff. So you can leave the hard stuff in 2024, but take the lessons with you into 2025 and then find the celebrations and the wins to build the momentum , to start 2025 with all that momentum.

It becomes a little easier to do that work when you've got a slightly different perspective than you get from your sort of day to day routine.

So this episode is like piggybacking off of last week's episode. It's basically part two.

Yeah. Part two. So last week was about reflection looking back and this week is about projection looking forward.

What do we want 2025 to be like and how do we make sure we set ourselves up for as much success as possible in 2025? So that goal setting process, we've got a few pieces to it that we've kind of been working on. And the first piece is we goal set in four different categories, and we get specific on the goals we want to achieve in each category, as opposed to just big picture goals for our whole life.

Try and get specific in those four categories. We also pick a word each for the year to sort of ground us and remind us of what the focus is for the year.

Like a theme.

Yeah. And then we also pick a song, something that reminds us of, what we're working towards. Something that can pull you up when you're feeling down or get you excited or get you in the right mood for the work and the things that you need to do.

And so those are the three big pieces that we've done. And then the last piece is the writing the letter from your future self. Yeah. So we like to write a letter on New Year's Eve. So, to be read on New Year's Eve of the following year. So, reading last year's letter this New Year's Eve and writing one this New Year's Eve to be read in December 31st, 2025.

So those are kind of the four pieces. So what are the four areas where we set goals?

So the four categories where we set goals are basically personal. So anything related to like your mindset or things that you want to accomplish, like, travel goals or things that you want to personally accomplish that don't really fit into the other three the next one is like,

a professional or like a business goal, something you want to do for your career or your business. The next one is health and vitality. So something you want to do for your health, whether that's run a marathon or you know, lose a bunch of weight, whatever it is, then, then that's a health goal. And the other

part of that, you said vitality.

One piece that often gets missed in that category is vitality is also how you recharge. So sometimes we're, we can be really good at setting goals like health specific goals around action things, but sometimes we forget to set ourselves up for success and how we recharge constantly so that we were operating from a full tank.

And then the fourth one is community. And relationships. So, you know, nurturing the important relationships in your life and what those look like. Like

building them, strengthening them, maintaining them, because I think we often forget to maintain one for relationships for sure. So those are the four categories.

Yeah, so we get specific within each of those categories and set one to a couple to a few goals within each of those categories.

Some overlap, like I'll set a goal and it can fit into vitality, but also in my personal or it could fit in, professional and community. there's definitely overlap, , you want to make sure that you have something that , touches all four categories for sure.

So this year, my word for the year actually goes along with that. My word for the year is connection. , cause, really connecting with someone actually requires me to be me. To be my flawed, vulnerable, imperfect self. Because otherwise, People don't connect with perfection, right? People connect with my flaws and my imperfections, so if my word for the year is connect, it's requiring me to be me.

I need the connection to be able to build community and build trust and that it applies to individual relationships, this relationship and other relationships, but it also applies to building strong groups and strong communities. So , this year, my word is connection because I am focusing on building and strengthening relationships and communities in my life.

Nice. It's a great word. And mine is similar. Like you used my word in your description several times. Mine's build. It's important for me this year to focus on building relationships, building our business, building my body and health and vitality. And so for me, it's really around. Build.

We're gonna build a community. We're going to build our business. , I'm gonna build my pie, and I'm gonna build you know, my mindset and my ideal life. And so build was the word that came to mind for me for 2025. And then I couldn't narrow down. I haven't nailed down one song yet.

I'll admit I've got it. I've got a short list of like three .

And they're all from the same artist, actually. So he's someone that I listened to a lot. He's got a lot of great songs. They're uplifting. They're empowering. they've got a good message and the, the artist's name is Andy Grammer and the songs I've got three of them. One is love is the new money.

Two is damn. It feels good to be me.

I like that one.

And the third one is born for this and I'm leaning towards born for this, but I haven't narrowed it down, but those are the three that I'm filtering through over the next week or so. And then I'll have a song for 2025. So I haven't really completely finished my homework for this episode, but those are the three that I've got it narrowed down to.

So we'll go from there and then I'll narrow it down to one of those three. And then who knows in the next week I might find a new one and go completely off the grid and have a completely different song altogether. That gives you a feel for where I'm at and where I'm thinking. If you go and listen to those songs, they're really uplifting.

They're empowering. Love is the new money is just talking about, what if we just replaced, money with love and just that that was what we were after. That's what , we were focused on growing is love instead of money. And then Dan feels good to be me is just, it's an empowering confidence building song of just, , you're good enough, exactly who you are.

And owning that and feeling good about it. And then born for this is basically, you know, there's struggles, there's challenges like life's going to throw, , curve balls at you. It's going to hit you in the face, but you're meant for this. You're born for this. this is you.

You're going to get through it. these are just challenges that you're going to rise and meet. You're born for this. So it's just a confidence building song. So those are the three. Just kind of give you an idea of where I'm at. Those are so good. Yeah. They're all good songs for sure. , all of his songs are pretty good.

Like I've got a few of his albums that I listened to kind of on the, on the regular rotation.

My song is called dreams. It's Greg Kimball. And it features Budokai.

It is such a good song.

Such a good song. It's the first song on the album.

The whole album, Purple Explosion 2. If you haven't heard about it, go check it out.

Such a great album. Good friend of ours. He is such a great musician. So is Budokai. So is Kayla, his wife. They're all amazing. Check that out for sure.

Yeah, the Purple Explosion Volume

2. There's a Volume 1 too. Go check that one out too. Volume

1's awesome too. Volume 2. This song, Dreams, comes from, it's the first song on the album for Volume 2.

And it's about saying your dreams out loud, making it real, doing the work, making your dreams reality. , it's inspiring. It's wonderful. And actually also shout out on that album to the road of life song, I think it's track 11.

I'm not sure, but it's like basically the theme song for this podcast.

You'll

recognize it.

You can hear that whole song on that album. It's really cool.

And so I think once you've made your final selection, Maybe we'll put a post on Instagram with our word each and what it means to us and why we picked it. And we'll put it to the song that we picked so everyone gets to hear the two songs.

You can find them on Instagram when we get those posted. At Meredith and Craig. So I think that's about it. Oh yeah, and then the, the letter. Like we talked about the last piece being

Yeah, I haven't done that yet.

The letter, yeah, because this podcast will actually air after New Year's Eve, but it is not yet New Year's Eve, so we have not read last year's letters slash written next year's letters yet.

That will happen. I really enjoyed that exercise too, putting yourself Into the future version of you and and the letter looks back on 2025. So you we write it on December 31st 2024 to be read December 31st 2025 as a look back on all that was accomplished all the lessons all the excitement all the feelings of 2025.

Might, go off script and actually do it while we're here over the next couple days just because of we're so removed from kind of everyday life that it's an inspirational kind of different place that might you know, the, the emotions and the, the thoughts might flow a little easier in this mindset where we're at now doing this work already, that I actually might switch the procedure and do it as we're evolving and.

Figuring out this whole, I guess, process for ourselves. And we've got this hotel room. It's nice. I'm in a different mindset. I think it's a good time for me to actually dig into that letter and, write the new letter. I might not read the other one. I might do that on New Year's Eve just because, but writing the new one might be, it might be a game changer to do that here while we're kind of a little bit removed from

And reading the old one, the last year's one is so fun.

It's all about the mindset you go into it with, because everything you thought was going to happen, obviously is not going to happen. Like, we're not perfect predictors of the future, we can't predict the future. We wrote down, , how we thought the year would unfold, and what it would feel like, and

In fact, I think it's going to be mostly not.

Yeah, for sure. Looking back at last I actually don't know what I wrote, but , I have a strong belief, strong inclination that it's going to be completely different than what actually transpired, especially the last few months.

But I also, think there will be a few nuggets that it was like, huh, wow.

Like, yeah. So it's going into it with the mindset of curiosity to see. You know what you did envision and how different things were and you know how sometimes better everything unfolded than you actually expected it would. you didn't get everything you thought you were going to, you didn't achieve everything you thought you were going to achieve in 2024, but instead you got some lessons that you needed to get so that you could become the person to get what you actually want.

I think the really important thing to remember is as you do this exercise and you realize like, Oh, I said all these goals, like, , 10 goals, five goals, whatever it is. And at the end of the year, you read the letter and you're like, I didn't really, I didn't meet them. And it's like, that's okay.

. Who did you become in the process? And , even though maybe you didn't hit the exact goal, maybe you got 75 percent of the way there. Well, that's 75 percent of the way there. That's better than if you had not set the goal and it stayed at zero. So have that mindset of like, Okay. Maybe I didn't complete all 10 things or whatever it is that you set up to do.

But if you did four or three or two, or even one, that's a win. Just focus on the positive focus on the wins. Take the lessons from why you didn't reach the other ones, but know that. You want to think big. You want to reach for the stars. And if you don't always hit them, that's okay. You're still better off than had you not set any at all.

And keeping in mind the universe is always working in your favor. So if you didn't hit a goal, there was a reason you didn't and it may not be clear to you yet. There was some lessons you needed to learn something, some version of you, you had to become , so I just think keeping in mind that The universe is always working in your favor And if you didn't achieve a goal, it's for a good reason and something even better is coming so that's a helpful mindset going in and Two books I kind of wanted to shout out as we were talking about this by the same author.

Dr. Benjamin hardy. The first one is Be Your Future Self Now, which is really helpful from the mindset of writing the letter. , it's my favorite book he's written actually, Be Your Future Self Now. And the second one goes to what you were just saying about, you know, you may not have gotten all the way there, but you got 75 percent of the way there.

And when you look back how far you've come, focus on that instead of focusing on the 25 percent that you didn't achieve. It's the gap in the gain. And so I think both of those books are really helpful, especially this time of year to get you in the right. Frame of mind, the right mindset to be preparing yourself for 2025.

So with that, I will ask you our farewell question and what's the one thing you're going to do coming out of this episode. We're so glad you're here. We love chatting with you, but this is more than just a chitchat. This is meant for change. So what's the one thing you're going to implement coming out of this episode?

One thing. Can be setting a goal because then we don't, we didn't set goals for years, but now we do. So maybe for you, it's just setting your first goal. And for 2025, maybe it's picking a song that's going to pick you up when you need it over the course of 2025, just find one thing to implement based on this episode and share this episode with a friend who also could use the pick me up and the help to plan for 2025.

And with that, see you on the next one. We'll see you next week. Bye.