How to Set Healthy and Sustainable Goals

January 2023 Newsletter

I just completed my first Instagram Live broadcast. The topic was on setting and achieving healthy and sustainable goals. I invited a guest, Anastasia Salichou, to join the conversation.

I enjoy Anastasia’s approach to relationships, transformation, Being, and goal setting. She has a holistic and ecosystem view to life and its challenges. I like how she emphasizes bringing acceptance into our life and having that be the starting point to any transformation. In one of her writings, Anastasia posed the question, “Ask yourself if those goals are respectful and loving.” That made me stop and think about my current goals. And by asking that question, I received a lot of insight and ended up ditching a few goals that were mis-aligned to whom I wanted to become.

Overall, the conversation went well. Once we got past some technical issues, the conversation opened and flowed in a good direction. The replay video is about 40 minutes long. We could have kept going for much longer, however. I’m sure we could have gone down many more rabbit holes and made the broadcast into a full feature film. But alas, I had to wrap it up before too many eyeballs dropped off the screen.

After the broadcast, I invested about 15 minutes or so in reflection time. I wanted to capture the key takeaways from our conversation before I forgot about them. There were a lot of golden nuggets during the broadcast, but let me share with you the “nuggies” that really stood out. Maybe you can integrate these insights into your life or current goal framework.

1. The end of January and into February is an excellent time to review your goals or set new ones

The seasons are shifting and spring will soon be here. The winter months, i.e, December and January, are meant for rest and reflection. According to the natural rhythms of life, we are meant to slow down, recoup, rest, and enjoy the slow time with community. Of course, that rarely happens in our culture. Our capitalist society is designed for perpetual growth with no breaks—that is, grind, grind, and more grind.

If “getting things done” or planning are difficult for you during winter, it’s because you’re not meant to do those things. But the energy is shifting. Now is a good time to set new goals and start planning for the upcoming energetic seasons of spring and summer. Use the month of February to move out of reflection and into planting new seeds.

2. One goal setting trap is setting inauthentic goals

Oftentimes, we fall into the trap of wanting goals that are not our own, but rather what our culture says we should want. In most cases, these are the cultural symbols of success: money, career, business, image, prestige, and power.

Do an audit on goals. Do you find yourself always setting work or money goals? Vacation goals? Body image goals? Not that there is anything wrong with those goals, it’s just that you may not truly desire them.

How can you tap in and listen to that inner yearning of what your heart desires? Maybe what you need are goals centered around rest, community, patience, reciprocity, spirituality, or relationships? Don’t let the world tell you what to want. Trust in your heart’s desires. That’s how you create authentic goals that are true to you.

3. Acceptance is the start of the journey

We often overlook the quality of acceptance. The tendency is jump right into our desires and goals. This ends up creating more problems rather than successful outcomes. Look at acceptance as gaining the ground beneath your feet. Acceptance helps heal past wounds, overwhelm, and fear around your goal area or desires. Essentially, acceptance creates new space and a greater capacity to operate in. You will have a difficult time discovering your true desires and tapping into that energy unless you feel okay with who you are and where you are at, right now, in life.

4. Desire is the fuel that drives a goal to completion

Desire can be tricky. We all have it but many us don’t know how to invoke desire because we were not allowed to. Most of us were told that wanting is bad and selfish, that giving and sharing are more important than your own wants and needs.

Fortunately, desire is like a muscle and can be trained. Start with small desires. Forget 10xing your life. Train the muscle of desire first and then work towards bigger desires and goals. Anastasia suggested to start small by forming a simple intention for your day or have an intention for the activity in front of you. Focus on that intention throughout the day and notice the energy of desire as the intention comes alive.

Those were the four golden nuggets from our conversation. To sum them up, they were: pay attention to the natural rhythms of life, set authentic goals true to you, start with acceptance, and train your desire muscle.

You can watch the entire video on my Instagram page. Fast forward the video until you see me and Anastasia in the same frame, that’s when the goal setting conversation got started. Unfortunately, Instagram didn’t give me the option to download and save the video—WTF! Instagram. Seriously.

Let me know if you received any insights or learnings about goals from this newsletter or from watching the broadcast replay. Feel free to send me an email by hitting reply or comment below.