2021 Planning, Goal Setting, Visioning
Imagine, you envision something for yourself and you actually make it come true. How cool would that be?!
The trick to making your vision become a reality is through reverse-engineering. Map out the tasks and goals that need to be completed to hit that vision, and you’ll reduce the bumps and misses along the way!
Getting that goal-setting energy might be hard after the tough year of 2020, but I think if we do this together, we’ll make some pretty great things happen.
My latest Empathy Rising podcast episode covers all of this. Let’s get you out of that 2020 burnout and into a place of visioning
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Full Show Notes (Transcript)…
Hey, risers. Welcome to episode 89 of Empathy Rising. So I have a little bit of a confession to make, and I feel like I was suffering from burnout from probably maybe November; definitely the last eight weeks of 2020, which I know everyone probably listening has had a similar experience or definitely felt like they were exhausted this year.
But I think I'm embarrassed about feeling like I let myself go all the way to burnout because I'm supposed to know better. Every clinician knows the signs and gets educated about burnout and is supposed to take care of themselves so it doesn't happen. And especially, cause I'm not even actually working clinically, I was like, why am I burned out?
But then, I thought about it and I've been holding space in three different containers for a year in one of the most crazy, hectic, chaotic years that any of us have ever gone through. Even though it's not a clinical space, I still have a lot of people's stories on my heart and I still care and help and assist and facilitate a lot of people.
I try not to beat myself up too bad about it. I just kept my head down and was just chugging along. In March when our first lockdown happened and I was just like, okay, it is what it is. I was having this discussion with my mother-in-law the other day about being a military spouse and being a military family, our quote, unquote, it is what it is muscle is just really strong, right?
Like the government tells us we're moving today. Okay. It is what it is. We're moving to a part of the country we don't enjoy. Okay. It is what it is. So I felt Oh, I'm a military spouse, I'm resilient. This is what I do. I cope with and handle uncertain situations and things that aren't what I would prefer necessarily.
And honestly, if you'd asked me in November, I would've told you I was fine. Yeah, I'm fine. Doing good, doing good. They just crept up on me and now I'm just like, I was feeling it in my bones. And there was also just this kind of, not only the exhaustion, but the reason I feel like it was burnout is I didn't even want to think about work.
I'd get angry when I would think about work and it would just completely shut me down. I had no sense of future casting. I had no sense of like hope or even excitement about the things for 2021. Everybody was hosting all their workshops and planning and making sure you buy this new business planner and this new content calendar and all this stuff. And I couldn't even look at it. Like I would just have visceral reactions when I would see that kind of stuff.
I pretty much went under a rock for all of December, which I normally take all of December off as well, but I'm never fully off, I'm planning or I'm prepping or I'm envisioning or I'm whatever.
And I didn't do any of that. I didn't touch my computer once the entire month. Except for the few calls that I had to finish out with students and with mastermind members and things like that. And as an Enneagram three, like that's just crazy for me because, my idea of relaxing is I've got my phone in one hand where I'm like, scrolling Forbes or looking for new trends or I'm listening to things on clubhouse or whatever. And that's my idea of relaxing.
Like I always, my mind is always engaged. I'm always thinking about business. And so to not do any of that felt strange at first. And then it felt really, really great. And then I was like, Oh no, I have to come back to work. But after, four weeks of just not having anything, by probably maybe like December 29th or maybe right towards the end of December, I started getting excited again. I started being able to think about things again, being able to plan again. And then I knew, okay. So things are starting to get better.
And there have been some big changes around my business that I will share with you in some upcoming episodes of, what the burnout made me realize, how I changed my business structure because of it. And I'm happy to always be transparent and share that with you guys. So we'll have that coming up on a few other, some upcoming episodes.
Now I still have baseline numbers to hit. I've never been shy about my goal for this business, which is to build our house in cash when Josh retires from the army. Retirement is about four years, and we'll just call it four and a half years away. If any of you follow me on my personal social media, I know several of you are friends. We're friends over there.
We purchased the land in December. So that was something that kind of wasn't business-related that got me excited about something again. But even though purchasing the land wasn't necessarily about business, my business supported that purchase, right?
We live day-to-day and completely off of Josh's income. It pays all of our bills. It pays our food, our, everything, we live off of one income. So whatever I make in my business gets saved. And that's how we were able to buy two acres. And then from here on out, everything else will just be going into A, developing that property and B, building the house.
So I still have numbers and metrics and goals that I need to hit each year in the business. Of course, there are the ones that I need to hit, but of course, then I want to exceed those and grow the business and everything like that. So I had to be able to come back to work in a refocused way in a more energized way.
And so I thought about this visioning exercise, and that's what I'm going to share with you guys today. Because I know many of us have teetered on burnout in our clinical work or have been fully burned out in our clinical work. And the shitty sucky thing is we still have a living to make. And I know clinicians who've taken sabbaticals and walked away for a year or a few months just to get healthy again. But for some of us, that isn't necessarily an option. So how can we re-envision our businesses? How can we re-envision our goals? In a way that A, gets us energized again, but B, makes them feel attainable and easier.
And so that's what we're going to share. I'm going to share today is the process that I went through. Once I felt like my mind could go there again. And also sharing it with you guys today because it takes some of these big overwhelming pieces and breaks them down into tangible tasks. That's what I'm always about is how can we make this A, authentic for you feel like it fits into your life and B, actually doable and not a pipe dream.
I'm usually always talking about Side Hustles. I'm talking about extra income streams, but if you're like me and you're still feeling some remnants of exhaustion for last year, maybe this visioning exercise is more for your practice for your bread and butter business right now, or maybe it's just for your life right now.
Of course, I'm always going to invite you to take the next step and to start thinking about your Side Hustle, to start thinking about shrinking this caseload that may be burning you out. But take today and apply that into your life wherever you might need it. All right.
So that is what we're going to talk about is how to hold a vision for yourself and your business, how to want a new or additional level, but how to also make those plans, goals, and tasks work for you where you're at in the immediate moment right now.
So I think 2020 was a blessing and a curse. I think, I mean, the pandemic is not over. Vaccines are coming out, things are getting better and I feel hopeful and I feel, dare I say it excited again. So I don't want to say it was over with 2020, but I think the quick pivots and the having to be more reactionary than responsive than a lot of us like to be in 2020. I think that was a blessing and a curse.
I still say that the nine weeks that we were locked down, which I know is a short time compared to a lot of you who might be listening, but we were locked down for nine weeks and that was one of the best things to happen to my family. It put a lot of our priorities in perspective.
We spent every day with each other. We got to know each other. My, my siblings, my daughters bonded as siblings more than they ever would have. And so I really see some positives from that. But the one thing that I think 2020 did that I see again, Enneagram three language coming here, that I see as a real detriment is I feel like 2020 squashed a lot of people's ambitions. A lot of people's drive and hope and excitement about doing something new and different, about evolving into who they are meant to be, who they can be.
Maybe, I'm just talking off the cuff here, but maybe it was a good thing. Maybe it, maybe that detour was needed for people to actually come into who they're meant to be instead of who they were striving to be.
So there are definitely great things about it. However, I don't want us to feel like when something comes up, it immediately means that we can't pursue ourselves, right? It goes back to the oxygen mask thing. And the whole, when you have a kid, it doesn't mean that your dreams stop. And you still need to take care of yourself first, because then you're going to be able to show up better for everybody else.
Which, I started this episode by talking about burnout. So the irony is not lost on me here. But I really, I really want us to still be able to pursue our dreams, pursue our goals, pursue new businesses and new ventures, and really step into what our next version of ourselves is. Even if there is stress and uncertainty, because just because we may be peaking out the backside coming out, the other side of COVID, it doesn't mean there's not going to be something else.
Cross my fingers, knock on wood, that it is not a global pandemic again, but there's always going to be a stressor in your life. There's always going to be uncertainty in your life. And so how can we create a vision, and how can we reverse engineer that vision so that if something comes up, we can still hold on to where we're going, what we're wanting, what our desires and our dreams and our hopes are, how can we still be moving towards those?
The pace may change. The path might even change, but we can still be moving forward. And that's what, I really want to just talk about today.
So something that I've been paying attention to over 2020, especially, but just one of the things that came up to me is I've realized that in my experience, people work one of two ways. They either spend a lot of time researching, gathering all of the info and all of the knowledge they need. This helps them feel prepared and it helps them feel more quote-unquote, ready. Even though I believe ready is a lie. The great thing about this is people become knowledgeable. They become informed this way.
However, there's a direct con to that. And that is that people who are researchers and knowledge gathers, tend not to take action. They tend to get stuck in research mode. They tend to get stuck in knowledge mode. And they might be able to have a really educated and eloquent conversation about something, but they're not actually putting it into practice.
On the flip side of this, I've worked with a lot of students who just jump in with both feet. They don't necessarily have the education or the foundation that these researchers do, but what they do is take action. They're doing it.
However, what I like to think or what these people make me think of is, when you have really gross food on your plate and you're moving it around to make it look like you're eating it, but you're not actually ingesting it. Like you're not actually taking bites of it. That's what these people make me think of, these action takers when there's no foundation. They’re moving a lot of pieces around like things look like they're happening, but it's not actually progressive. It's not actually taking them anywhere.
So when they come up to the surface or when they look around and poke their head up, they're like I think I just made a big, old mess. Right? There's not actually an organized, thoughtful, intentional path that they've been taking. So it seems like they're getting a lot done, but really they're just pushing things around.
In the first case, we have a vision, but we have no plan. And the other way around those action takers, they have tasks with no vision, right? So the two need to be connected Your action-taking and your reflection, your knowledge base, they need to be connected. When you connect the two, when you connect the big vision all the way down to the tiny tasks, this is where you strike that balance between reflection and action.
This is when you'll know what to do and when to do it, but also why you're doing it and how it connects to the bigger picture. So we need both. We need to learn. We need to gather outside data and outside knowledge. We need to bring that insight and we need to mull it over. We need to say, how does this apply to me?
We need to integrate it. In that integration process there's the deciding, is this a fit for me or not? Because not every strategy is going to be the right strategy for you. And then once we've brought the outside knowledge and once we've messed with it, molded it a little bit. We have to move. We have to take action.
And so connecting those two pieces is what is going to make it so that you move forward.
Now, this action is going to feel imperfect. Of course, if you that's the issue with those knowledge gatherers is a lot of times people who are the researchers they're bombarded by perfection, and that's one of the things that makes it so they don't take steps forward or move forward is that, Oh, let me learn about this. That's an awesome strategy, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to do it the right way. So they just keep learning about it in hopes that it's going to help them do it the right way.
So we need to find a way to be able to gather the knowledge, integrate the knowledge, and move forward on the knowledge. How fast this process happens is up to you, but all three pieces are essential and all three pieces need to be there.
Okay! So let's dive into my process for connecting the knowledge and the action for connecting your vision and your tasks and your to-dos. The process that I go through for doing this is reverse engineering. Now reverse engineering helps ensure that you don't miss any steps because when you go backward, you start to use if-then thinking. If I want this to happen then this already needs to be in place or this needs to have happened first. Sometimes when we think forward, we are more familiar with projecting forward, it's a more familiar process for us, so it's easier for us to miss steps because we're like, well, of course, that has to happen. I'm not going to write that down or I'm not gonna you gloss over things that feel too familiar.
So when you force yourself to go in the reverse, you start to pay attention to more details than you would have glossed over because it's an unfamiliar way of thinking. So people who do this a lot are people who are project managers, think of like a foreman on a construction job.
So they realize, all right, this house has to be built by the end of 2021. And they're like, so if 2021 is our finished date, what comes before that? And they're like, okay, then, before December 2021, in November 2021, that's when we're doing our final walk-throughs. Okay. And then in October 2021, what has to happen before the final walk-throughs? This has to be done.
I'm not familiar enough with construction to know what these things are, but when you have a big project, project managers often reverse engineer. If that housebuilder was sitting there in, January 2021 and was saying like, all right, so this needs to happen, then this needs to happen, then this needs to happen. And they are forward-thinking, they're much more likely to skip over steps.
And this is when we get into issues like, Oh, the appliances are here, but the flooring's not done. So now the appliances have to sit for two months or whatever, right? When you reverse engineer it, when you backward plan it, you know I can't put appliances in until the floors are in. So now I need to think about the floors, right?
So we're taking that same mentality, that same flip, and we're applying it to our visioning practice or our business planning practice.
So the first thing that we need to start with is a vision. And I sometimes do this process over a few days because sometimes it takes me a while to get there, especially this last year with the burnout, it took me a while to be able to get here. But your vision is your big picture, your dreamy ideal situation, go there. If your vision is living on a yacht or whatever, allow yourself to go there.
Do not censor here. Do not self-edit here. Really just what's this vision. It could be, it could totally be outlandish. It could totally be ridiculous. It can just be this ideal dream situation.
The goals then are what needs to happen in order for this vision to feel possible, right? If your true vision is to live on a yacht what are the yeah-buts that come up with that? Yeah, I'd love to live on a yacht, but... And some of those buts are going to be legitimate. But my parents are aging and I can't be far away from them or whatever. That's a legit obstacle that may make that living on a yacht vision, not a reality.
The yeah-buts that come up that are possible to fix or possible to address, turn into your goals. I'm going to give an example of this in a minute and it'll probably make it a little more, make it a little easier to understand.
From the goals. Okay. So the vision is big picture dreamy, ideal situation. Goals are what needs to happen for those visions, the vision to feel possible. The plans then are the smaller pieces of the goals. So they're what you're working toward to make progress to the goals. So we break the goals down into smaller chunks.
The tasks are smaller pieces of the plan. And this is what you're doing on a daily basis. The tasks accumulate into your plans, your plans accumulate into your goals. And when you reach the goals, they make the vision possible. Okay.
So here's an example. Let's say you have a vision of semi-retirement, meaning that you're only working 20 hours a month. So you know that four hour work week, that five-hour workweek, that lots of people are working towards and dreaming of, that's your vision. Okay. So in that vision, you are writing a novel, you are traveling, you're growing a garden, you're raising chickens. These are all of my fantasies and visions by the way.
Whatever that is in that expansive life that you live because you're semiretired, that's your vision. So I want you to take some time and really go there for that. This is the piece that might, if you're like me and not much of a visionary, this is the piece that might take a little bit longer and a little bit more effort.
Those of you who are better, big picture thinkers and better visionaries, this part might come really easy to you. But this really sets the tone for everything else. So make sure that your vision gets some attention.
Okay. Now the vision, it feels amazing, right? That would be so awesome! That'd be amazing! But then the yeah-buts come up. I'd love to semi-retire however, I have a mortgage. I'd love to be semiretired, however, I have student loans. Okay. So those, yeah-buts, those become our goals. So in order for this vision to actually feel possible, you need to be debt-free.
If you were debt-free, if your loans were gone and if your mortgage was gone, you could totally cut back your work. Okay. So now paying off your house and paying off your loans, that's your goal.
Let's say you have $55,000 in student loans and you have $300,000 on your house. So you know that your goal to contribute to the semiretired vision is paying off $355,000 of debt.
Holy crap. That feels like a lot. But now we need to make plans. Now we know what we need to do. $355,000. That's our debt number. What are our plans to address that debt number? Now, this could look totally different, right? Everybody who just heard that probably came up with a couple of different situations in their mind where it's possible.
Again, we're not self-editing here. We're not critical here. We need to just let the ideas flow of what happens. So how could you start working toward this $355,000? How soon do you want it? That's a big question. And how would you like to make it? Okay.
Do you want this to be a high touch offer? Do you want this to be a low touch offer? Do you want this $355,000 in quote-unquote, passive income? Do you want it to come from working with people in-depth, but in a different way than therapy? This is contrary to what I normally stand for, but could you take more clients on in your therapy practice? That's not what I want for you guys. I want you guys to have fewer clients and an additional income stream, but that is one possibility, right?
So from here, just start brainstorming a bunch of different methods that you could make this $355,000.
Then it becomes, now that you have a plan, it becomes the tasks to carry out that plan. So here's an idea. Maybe you decided on a premium group program, you want to keep high touch work, but you want it to be in a different way than therapy, right? So a premium group program and you charge $5,000 for this group program. You would need 71 total sales to be able to equal that $355,000. 71 students at $5,000 would be $355,000.
Now, if you had set your goal or if you'd set your parameter for five years, that would only be 14 students a year. 14 students a year in your group program in five years, you'd be debt free. 14 students a year is so doable. So doable. If this was a six month group program, you could have seven in each round. If this was a longer group program to, to, equal that $5,000 or whatever, those are things we would talk about. We can work out right. But. If it's a once a year type of program, 14 students in one program is totally possible.
Think about the therapy groups that you've run in the past. You've definitely had nine, 10, 12, 14 people in those groups. It's not a stretch.
So now we've connected the dots, right? We've connected the dots between you semi retiring all the way down to the task of getting 14 students in a year into a group program.
Now, this definitely feels like a macro level, right? Because 14 students in a group program, there's still a lot that we have to figure out of how to do that. So then take that 14 students a year in a group program that becomes your vision. And just reverse engineer from there.
So you can use the system on a macro level. You can use the system on a micro level. You can do it once and then get to some clarity and then put that piece of clarity into the vision spot and do it again and get more clarity.
So here's what we're doing in this process. We are taking that vision. This is the reflection. This is the the knowledge piece. This is the personal piece, and we are taking that and we're moving it backwards and backwards and backwards til we get to the point where we know what we need to do. From there, you can start taking actions. So this is what I really like about this process is it connects both. It works for the thinkers and it works for the doers.
If you were listening and listening to the part where I was coming up with the plans, and I was saying, how do you want this to happen? How much money do you want to make from it? How fast do you want it to happen? How high touch do you want it to be? These are all of the questions that we address in my masterclass. How to Transcend the Therapy Room.
So in that masterclass, we take a look at offer creation from. This reflective standpoint so that you can understand what ways you want to make this additional money, or what ways you want to make this additional impact. And you can start analyzing this from lots of different angles and you can start to see, Oh, I'm drawn to that. I'm not drawn to this. This sounds interesting. This doesn't sound interesting.
And when you start to answer these questions, you can start to move forward.
You can register for this master class it's totally free and it's on demand. So you can watch it at a time that's most convenient for you. You can go ahead and head on over to marissalawton.com/masterclass and register for the event. It will really be the thing that helps you put the reflection and the action together in one place. So I'm excited to see you there!
Until then guys, keep on rising!
