Camille Rapacz: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Belief Shift Podcast.
My name is Camille Rapacz. I am a business consultant and leadership coach.
And I'm usually joined by my lovely cohost George Drapeau.
But this is another summer shorts episode. So I'm just going solo today.
Camille Rapacz: And today I wanna talk about a monthly routine that will help you achieve your goals a little bit faster, and maybe also enjoy the process just a little bit more.
I've been doing this with a group of folks for some time now, and their feedback has been , they love this process. They love that we do it together, and it has really helped them stay on track. So I wanted to share this with you because you can do this on your own. Now, there is something really amazing about doing a process like this in a community.
If you wanna learn more about that, I'm gonna drop a little link in the show notes so you can learn more about how you could join the community that I have that is actually doing this on a monthly basis. But for now, I just wanna share with you this process so that you can try it out on your own. So here's how it works.
This is a monthly routine around setting goals and intentions. And step one is to first identify what was your goal last month? And you might have had a lot of goals, but maybe just state the most important one. And whether you wrote this down or not, I want you to just get something in mind that was, this is the thing I really hoped to achieve last month.
Now if you repeat this process over a few months, it'll be really clear what your goal was last month because that's what this process is doing. But for now, if you're starting out new, just ask yourself, what did I really wanna get done last month? And write that down.
And then the next step, step two, how did you perform against that goal?
So give this a number. What percent complete did you get? Did you get 20% there, 80% there? Just give it a number. And remember, there's no judgment in this. This is just you assessing and looking at data to improve performance and improve how you're going to achieve goals in the future. So give this the best, accurate number you can.
Step number three, reflect on your accomplishments. So what did you accomplish last month? Right? All of them down. This could be a really long list, and I would love it if it was a really long list because we tend to only look at the things that are going wrong and we don't necessarily look at all the things that we're doing well.
So I want you to write down all these accomplishments, and you could write this down in, here's everything I accomplished towards my goal, which actually is a great way to assess. How much work you did to the goal, regardless of how, what your percent complete was. Because sometimes we tend to set goals that are a little bit too big and then we're sad when at the end of the month we didn't get as far as we wanted to.
If we actually looked at all the work we did toward achieving that goal, we would probably be pretty impressed with ourselves and realize that, oh, we just really set the goal too big. So I want you to write all those accomplishments, but also write accomplishments that were not directly related to the goal.
This is important as well, 'cause you're doing a whole lot of other work and it's important that you recognize all the effort that you're putting into your work or in your personal development. The other part of reflecting on accomplishments is to capture the things that you learned.
These are wins too. So even if some of those learnings came from a little bit of a painful experience, which unfortunately most of the best things we learn, do, I want you to capture those as wins as well. These are things that your accomplishments or things that I learned, so write down things that you learned as well last month.
Step number four, identify areas for improvement. What are things that you could tweak or adjust? Maybe just 1%, like 1% improvement is what we're looking for. We need to make big strides here. You know, this gets back to what I really like talking about, which is micro moves. How could you just micro move your way into a little bit of a 1% improvement here?
So maybe just jot down a few ideas for some small tweaks or adjustments that would be easy to make, but could potentially make a big difference.
Step number five. Now we start looking to the future. What comes next? You've probably got a whole lot of stuff in your head about what you'd like to accomplish.
Start writing 'em all down. What are all the things that you would love to get done next month? I. These can be big, small goal related, not what. Don't worry about what they are at this point. Just clear your brain of all of these ideas. 'cause your brain is not really intended to just hold all these ideas.
We need to clear them out to make room for other thoughts and for problem solving and all these other higher functions. So get these things all out on paper. Just brainstorm 'em all out once you've written them all down.
Then we go on to step six, which is we're gonna now narrow down to identifying your number one priority goal for the month.
Now I know you're gonna say, I have more than one goal. I have lots of things I have to work on, and I definitely understand and respect that. But there is something about this activity of just having to identify if there was just one thing that I could accomplish this month, what would it be that would make the biggest difference? Is a great exercise to do.
So I want you to look at all the things you brainstormed out. And the first step is you can start grouping them into sort of like categories, similar categories or similar types of activities. Maybe they turn into little mini projects or something like that. So think about how you can start grouping them together.
And then start looking at them from the perspective of if you have a big picture vision, like a long-term place you're trying to be. So if you're, if you're running a business and you have a long-term say, annual goal, you could think of it from that perspective. If you have a long-term vision for where you want your career to be professionally, it could be that. You have a big project you're working on.
It could be related to that. Or if you don't have any of those things, if you're thinking, I don't really have this long-term vision, then don't worry about that. Then I just want you to think about this in terms of things that you really want to get done versus things that you know need to get done.
So whether you have a big picture, vision or not, thinking about all of the things that you wanna accomplish in this next month in terms of say, the fun activities, things that you just kind of want to do and you're maybe trying to justify as important versus the things that, you know, I really need to do it, but gosh, I don't want to.
This is a great time to just assess that and ask yourself, well, which one am I gonna pick? You don't always have to pick the one that needs to get done. Maybe you don't have the energy for it. Maybe you need a quick win. So don't feel like you have to pick the needs, but always be honest with yourself about what is it that actually needs to get done right now.
And then pick one. Pick a goal for the month. Pick that number one thing that would be so fantastic to get done. When you pick this goal, make sure you write it as a SMART goal. If you're not familiar with this, you can look it up.
Lots of explanations about it. But basically, SMART goal stands for the goal is specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time bound. Now, we're already time bounding this by saying it's a goal to achieve in the month, but then the other one I really want you to be clear on is that you can measure the outcome of this goal.
Often we set goals that just say, I'm gonna get this thing done. And that is not a good way to measure progress on a goal. You are doing something to achieve a specific outcome. So just saying it's done doesn't tell you whether getting it done actually achieved the real goal, which was the outcome you wanted from getting the thing done.
So have an actual outcome that you can measure how well it went. This can be a little bit tricky, but the more you practice doing it, the better you'll get at it. So follow this smart goal model to set that goal. And then also I want you to think about one improvement that would support this goal. So going back to step four where I said identify something that would maybe just be a 1% better improvement.
Pick one of those that really seems like it would support this goal that you're going after. And if none of them seem to really support it, then just pick one that you really wanna work on. But remember, it's really small and it should be tied with this goal as best it can be. So that is step six. Now you have your number one priority goal for the month, and you have this one little micro improvement that you're gonna make as well.
The last step is to set your intentions around this goal. So having the goal is one thing, but sometimes goals can really, you know, there's a lot of ways that we can pursue them and often we can set a goal that has us either sacrificing things or making really bad decisions. All in pursuit of, I've gotta achieve this goal.
We could also set goals up that we're dreading and we just, Ugh, I don't really wanna do this, but I'm gonna go into it. And so it's just, we don't enjoy it as much as we could because we've really turned the challenge of the goal into something not very appealing. So I want you to be thinking about setting intentions that will really support you achieving the goal. And so questions you can ask yourself is, well, how do I want to show up as I work on this goal? Who do I want to be? How do I want to act? What would really be in service to achieving this goal better then me going into it with less enthusiasm for the goal.
And so this might be something like, you know, this goal is really gonna require that I have a lot more focus and discipline. I'm gonna have to sit at my desk and really focus because that's what this goal requires. And I'm not really good at that. I really like being out and about, but this is how I need to show up for this goal to happen.
And if you can get your head wrapped around being in this way, showing up in this way for this goal, because you know the benefit that this goal is gonna give you down the road, then it can make it easier to sort of lean into this.
When you set these intentions, you could also think about this in terms of turning it into maybe a little bit of a personal mantra that you're gonna use for the month that's really gonna help you drive to this goal. Set some clear intentions for how you're gonna pursue this goal.
All right. Those are the seven steps that you will follow, your little routine that you're gonna do every month that you can do around your goals. And you can use this for both personal and professional or business goals. I'd recommend you try this with just one goal for a few months, but do use this a few months before you decide whether it's great for you or not, because it really builds over time.
The people who I've taught to use this and who I do this with continuously, they really find that the benefit is in doing it month after month, over and over because they learn so much more. They understand themselves so much better. They set much better goals and they really get better at achieving them, and they enjoy that process better because they're reflecting on things they actually learned and accomplished. And so instead of just reflecting on whether they made a goal or not, they're really enjoying the process of achieving the goal of pursuing the goal much more.
So I encourage you to try this out. If you do try it out or if you have a, maybe a different take on a monthly routine you already do, I would love to hear about it. So go to the belief shift.com and you can hit the little widget there for voicemail and leave me a little message. I would love to hear from you.
Alright, that's all I have for this week. If you are so inclined and you are enjoying this podcast, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Would absolutely love that. But also just share it with your friends. Alright, that's all I have for this week.
I'll be back in your ears next week.
