Alright, let's get in and talk about goals. So we got to have an objective as artists, it helps if we have a destination. Right? So let me ask you a question other than your life, what is the most important commodity that you have? Well, you might say love, but you can lose love and get it back about money. You can lose money and make it back.

You can lose a car and make it back. You can lose weight and gain it back. Okay? But time, time is something that never comes back. Once it's gone, it's gone. So I like to say that time is our most valuable commodity.

So we don't want to waste it especially as artists. Our time is limited, so we want to make it count. Now setting goals This is something that I, I'm not a list maker. And so setting goals is difficult for me, you know, I'm an artist, I'm a free spirit. I don't want to make lists. I don't want to set goals out there and then put time limits on them.

But I've had to learn to do that. And you might be like me, so I want to kind of teach you how to do that. Now. Michael Hyatt who is a goal setting master guru out there. He said, there's two kinds of lives. There's the the drifting life.

Right? It just trips, never goes anywhere, and there's the driven life. And that person is just type a right? And they're just going, going going, never stop doing never stop achieving. And either these positions Hear are really not desirable. You don't want to drift and you don't want to be driven.

Because this can lead to health problems. Right? It can break up your relationships. It can strain, right break them up. And so, we want to find something that works that we can avoid drifting or being driven. So let's first look at the benefits of setting goals.

You know, after doing this, you probably have a better sense of your direction, in life, in your career, etc. That's good stuff. You probably have a feeling of excitement. You need that that's the fuel for moving forward. excitement for yourself. Future you probably feel like being an artist is possible.

And not impossible. That's a good thing. These are all good things, you'll probably be more optimistic because of that, and you'll be, you'll be more receptive and ready to go to the next level. So, those are some of the benefits of setting goals. Well, let's look at why goals fail. What are the top reasons that goals fail?

Again, Michael Hyatt the guru of goal setting says there's four main reasons and you Number one is lack of clarity. Number two, lack of motivation. Just not motivated to do it, right. Lack of activation. You don't engage. Right?

If you're not motivated, you won't activate. And then there's the lack of visibility. That's number four. If you don't see your goals, if you don't have them in front of you, as some kind of list, place where you can see them. You probably won't achieve the goals. They'll just disappear.

You'll forget About. But I'm going to add two more reasons. We get rid of this for now can add two more reasons for goal failure. And number five is unrealistic expectations. I think that's a big one. For many people.

It's a big one for me. Because if you don't know how to set goals, you may go in the wrong direction. You know, thinking I got a dream big and so he just had these huge leaps of unrealistic expectations. That's one reason for goal failure. And number six is there's no strategy right? You might have this destination Huge expectation.

But you have no way of getting there, right? You need a plan to execute and get you to the goal. Right? Does that make sense? totally makes sense. Okay.

We've looked at the benefits. We've looked at why goals fail, most often, we need kind of a strategy. So let's look at this thing called smarter goals. You probably heard of this. It's out there. It's an acronym.

Smarter stands for something you've probably heard of smart goals. So smarter goals are specific. They're measurable. actionable. If you never heard of this, it's probably start to make sense. Right, we're breaking this thing down from big huge problem into smaller, bite sized problems.

You gotta be a little bit risky, they have to be outside your comfort zone. Time keyed, or time bound. Gotta be an end date, right? The due date. They have to be exciting, right? They gotta be something you want to do that gets you supercharged.

And then they have to be relevant. Right? If they're not relevant, they're really not worth doing. Right. So there's, this is kind of a, an evaluation. We're saying this thing a is better than this thing B or C or even D. So Kind of creating a value with a on the top.

That's thing we're shooting for. Right? Everything else is kind of below that. But we want to get to this place here. Okay, good. So those are your smarter goals.

If you haven't heard of that, it's definitely a powerful thing. So let's keep moving here. So how do we walk out those smarter goals? How do we really just do this? Because I've told you a bunch of bunch of definitions and a bunch of reasons why it's good, why isn't good, what gets in the way causing failure? So look, let's just focus.

Let's get our focus going. For this lesson, we're just going to focus In on one main goal, just one main goal for the year, let's say you're probably going to have some other sub goals. Right? But let's just keep it to one right now and see how this works. Once you focus on that goal and you have it clearly what it is, you want to get really clear on something else. And that is the why question.

You got to get clear on this. You need clarity. Because if you can get clear on this, it's often said if any man has a why can bear anyhow let me say that If someone has a good why they can bear any how, in other words they can get through any hardship because they have a reason a why what's making them tick? what's motivating them? Because everybody has kind of a Polaris star right? They have like a North Star that guides them.

Right ships. In the olden days, they used to use the North Star to navigate. And so people are always optimizing themselves for something. There's something motivating every action, right? Just about you go to work. Why you need money.

Okay. You need love. So you reach out, you start talking to people, you start going out on dates, you know, the reader. The reason is, is that you need intimacy in your life. So you're trying to build something, and you're trying to use good behaviors to make that possible to make it happen in the future. So the motivation, the Y is super important.

You know, because your y provides that a connection to the goal. I'd say this is really important. The why provides connection to the goal. Right? You need that connection. Because if you don't have the connection, the first obstacle that comes along, it's just gonna derail you, right?

You're gonna stop, you're gonna fail. You're gonna fold So you've got to have a really good clear why because it's the connection. It's the glue, really, to keep you in relationship connected to your goal. So let's get real clear on the Y. Okay, we got that. Let's go to the next thing here.

So let's say the first step after you get your y is one, find your main goal. And your why. The why again, could be, I want to make money, right? I'm bored. So I want to have an active life. I want to do something interesting.

I want to make a difference and other things. people's lives. Okay, I think you get the picture, the number two, you're going to kind of set micro goals or divide that up that major goal into micro goals. I'll explain that. And then you'll create a specific deadline. Set that out in the future.

It's important to do that and to set set it into the future. You got to put it on your calendar. Okay, so let's look at the micro goals. Okay, so that's taking that steep ascent to your goal up here. And it's really giving you platforms small enough, right? enough to actually make it up the slope because it can be pretty steep.

It can be setting the goal is pretty hard. It's not an easy thing. So we kind of need these incremental steps. That's our micro goals. That's what basically we set us up for. And we're gonna get specific about this in a few minutes.

But after you set those micro goals, the fourth thing you want to do is you want to think about your resources. That's fuel that you need to get you there, so it could be money, right? You need money for, let's say marketing yourself on social media, Facebook ads, Google ads, business cards, and so on. You need money for equipment, tools, write any paper, you need paint, you need computer programs, all that kind of stuff. Any time, right? That's a resource.

So you might think about getting some apps that help you track time. I have some apps that helped me do that. One is called do and that puts something on a schedule, a task, and I can set it for time, specific time and day. And then my phone will remind me so it's a little reminder, there's another one called slaw. That's a timer. And there is a third one called focus keeper.

The idea with that one is that you set a certain block of time, let's say 20 to 25 minutes, where you're very focused. And then it'll switch to like a five minute break. So you have 25 minutes, you know, intense focus. And then you have a five minute break, and it just keeps you on track, instead of focusing and suddenly it's an hour two hours later, and then you haven't had a break, you start to feel hungry and tired. This breaks it up and keeps kind of keeps it moving in a more healthy way. So those are things like resources, you know, you need your health.

That's a resource. So you probably want to do some exercise, right? And just keep you keep you healthy. take breaks, like I just mentioned. What else that could be relationships, those resources, so all the things to think about all the things you need to get you to your goal, right? You might be a car.

Okay, you might need a job while you're working on that goal. Okay, so whatever it is, get specific about those things. Okay, let's go to number five. Let's go here to number five. Okay, the number five thing you gonna track your progress. This is the hard part, I think maybe all of it's hard but tracking your progress.

So you'll have some system some way where you can take a look at where you are in the process, you'll need something that says, yep, finished it or something that says, you know, in progress still in the queue unfinished and something that says, you know, oops, you know, not done. ran into some problems or whatever, right. So you have these three states of Yes. No, and, you know, working just real Simple, just so you can. It's like, you know, when the teacher grades you and gives you a grade. It's not a personal evaluation, it's just giving you realistic data on where you're at.

And if you can track that, you can, you know, find the problems, keep on it, and mark it off when you've done it in. And that's really important. So what are some of these obstacles to all this? We talked about some things but get a little bit more specific. About I don't have a precious resource called time. My precious resource time is all used up.

I don't have money to do this. Right. Yeah. I can sympathize with that. Understand. It's an obstacle, and we have to find solutions for these things.

How about perfectionism? It's a big one that would get in my way, it would cause anxiety and stress, because if I couldn't do it perfect, I just wouldn't do it. That that's not good. That's like one option. Here's the option A. If I can't do that, a, I got no other options.

I got blank, right. But if I have the ability to see, maybe there's two options, A and D, and a few possibilities in between, there's even B and C. Or maybe there's just a and b, how about a and b? So I'm opening it up to possibilities, right? Because perfectionism is a closed circuit, about limiting beliefs. beliefs I can't do it not good enough. I'm too old.

Right? too young. One more to say maybe there's no one. No one to show me. Me. How.

And then there's fears, right? Like, afraid to fail, or even bizarrely afraid to succeed. Whatever, I'm afraid I'll waste my time. I'm afraid I'll lose my money. I'm afraid I'll look stupid. That's a big one.

Embarrassed by stupid and embarrassed in front of people. Well Yep, you will. You know, you don't Want to but kind of well, but it means that you're making progress. If you're feeling stupid and embarrassed, you're probably moving. That's a good thing. You're not in your comfort zone.

Okay? Perfect. You don't want to be in your comfort zone. If you are, you're not moving. You're not going anywhere, most likely. Alright, so I've made a little table kind of a worksheet.

I'm going to provide this for you, I'm going to give this to you. But you can write this down in a book. I mean, it's just you can do it any way you want. But let's look at it. This kind of condenses everything. Now, in column one, you've got your main goal.

And that could be I want to be a better artist, isn't what we're looking for. That's not specific. thick enough, right? It's too It's too wide. It's too big of a goal. It's too ambitious.

It's not clear. So, maybe you want to say something like, you know, I want to go to the San Diego Comic Con San Diego con this year, okay. All right. Why? It's a good goal. Why?

Well, it's gonna it's gonna give me exposure. Maybe it'll help me make some money. I can sell some books, some art. Maybe I can meet lots of people you know, and I can network Okay, maybe I can help others. So these are all really good, sort of it's fuel. It's your why your connection to this main goal.

And so then you've got your micro goals. Let's zoom in here. Your micro goals how you're going to break that down. All right, you're going to need to create, create art, you're going to need lots of stuff. So you need time to do that. Number two, you're going to get your business cards.

Right, you need to exchange information, let people know you're out there who you are. They're never going to remember you. If you don't get a business card Okay, what else you know you're gonna call you're gonna go to the website and reserve you know a spot, buy a ticket and then you're going to print your stuff. You're gonna frame your stuff and just get ready, right because it's going to come it's some months away but it's going to come quick. And that when could be well if someone sometime in July is the con, okay? So you know when and then you can track your progress.

And you can put this stuff in your sketchbook, just have it somewhere where you can see it. You have to be able to see it. Because that's one of the major reasons the goals fail, right is it's not visible. So you can see it. You can do it in, you know, a Word document. You can do it in your sketchbook, you can just draw this table out.

You can do it in Excel, and then track your progress. And then yes, maybe, or not yet. Right. This is good stuff. So maybe we can take like another example. So maybe you want to learn how to, you know, draw figures.

Why? Because you love it because it gives you energy Because you want to be a professional painter or character, designer or you want to be a fine artist or whatever the case is, right? You want to teach you want to be teaching you want to teach it. So that you why maybe again, you want to make money. You want to help others, you want to be relevant. Okay, then your micro goals.

How are we going to break it down? How are we going to get here? Well, I'm going to have to learn about gesture. To give it life, I'm going to have to learn about construction. Put it down on the page convincingly. I'm gonna have to learn about anatomy.

Muscle bone. Right? I'm gonna have to learn about some techniques. What kind of medium and marketing use pen pencil charcoal paint, oil paint. Right? When am I going to do this?

Okay, so let's set something. Let's break it down a little bit. Let's say we want to have a goal, you know, in six months. So in the first, let's say, you know, two weeks, one to two weeks. I'm going to study gesture Then one to two weeks. I'm going to study construction.

And let's say four weeks. I'm going to study anatomy. And then I'm going to give myself another four weeks or more. For techniques, I'm going to explore different techniques and techniques. Maybe it's six weeks, maybe it's longer, maybe this is, maybe this is one year, right? Or you'll do it for six months, evaluate it, and then set another goal for another six months.

And so this is going to help you with that first principles idea. breaking something bigger, big down into some smaller constituent parts that you can handle. And that definitely helps you succeed. Right and it gives you energy, because as you succeed, you get more excited and you see it's possible, and then you track your progress. Okay, so hopefully those are some good kind of examples there that help you out. One of the other things that we want to do is make a commitment to ourselves to this.

So what's that gonna look like? Okay, so you want to write like a personal declaration. Here, we're gonna get a little bit psychological here because this is psychological. So it's got to be, it's got to be meaningful. It's gonna be something that states that you know what your goals are. These are my goals.

Right? Get it down on paper. These are my aspirations. Something about getting it down on paper. These are your intentions, right intentions. It gets it moving, it gets it out there, it gets it more real.

And we can see if they're actually realistic, right. It's kind of, you know what you want to keep, and what you want to throw away. Then you start your day. You kind of focus on this, you meditate on this focus and meditate on this personal declaration, and that's gonna help You start to believe it. Because believe me, when you set a goal in motion, there's all these things that are going to come against it. It's just the way it is.

It's going to start a little pressure. So like a little war that says, I'm gonna stand up against you here, because you want to do this. I don't know why, but that's the way it is. So you need to start to believe it. You got to get rid of the limiting beliefs and start to believe you can do this. And then your actions.

We'll start to reflect that they'll start to follow your beliefs, right? And then it'll be like a feedback loop. Your actions will influence your beliefs. beliefs will influence your emotions and actions like that. And you'll be basically This whole thing is you'll be transforming yourself. Because each time you take a new step up, right, you're going to need a new, a new version of you.

Right? This one was down here. It wasn't enough to get to here yet. And then you sort of bring all this stuff into play and it brings a new you that helps you get here. And then to get to that next place that's higher, you're going to need another, you know, new version of yourself a new new version, let's say new version of self, and vs. envious, okay, and so on like that because you're here and it's adequate for here, but it's not yet adequate for there. So you're going to keep trying Transforming yourself.

And so you need to believe it, you need to take action. And, you know, basically you need power. You need resources for that. You need to basically kind of support this process both physically and mentally in this personal declaration there's a few kind of steps to this. So let's say step one is the self affirmation. Remember, this is stuff that you're gonna meditate on in the morning.

Start to make this happen, begin to believe it. And so you're going to speak, you're going to speak in the present. In other words, I am statements. Zoom on this one. I am action words like doing. I am believing.

They're definitely statements in the now. Because we're leaving the past behind. We're moving forward. start to think about what it would be like if the struggles that are holding you back are gone. The limiting beliefs, think about the potential you know what was Would it be like, if I actually attain these goals? What's my how's my life gonna change?

Right? Am I gonna have more money, more time, more energy, better lifestyle will have more respect, like just have better work, will I just be more pleased with myself and happy. So speak to the struggles in a positive attitude and shift the struggles into actions. So you want to sort of transform the struggles by speaking them, transform them into actions that start to affect change. Delta is change the Greek symbol for change and here's another big thing is practicing self compassion in this process or sell? empathy.

Right? Have some empathy for yourself, think of yourself as someone that you're responsible for how would you treat someone that you love and you're responsible for. So this compassion and empathy, give it to yourself extended to yourself. Take care of your health, your mental health, your physical health and your spiritual health really nourish those things because you're going to need those things, as platforms as foundations, to help keep you up and keep you moving. So you want to have another piece of this. We talked about that self affirmation in step one, and then really having this compassion for yourself because you're gonna Fall, right?

You're gonna make mistakes. But by transforming these struggles, right by by speaking to those struggles, you know, they're they're transforming them into actions that are going to affect change. Well, okay, how do we do that? Let's look at failure just a little bit. So again, failure is going to happen. But failure really kind of says that you're, you're moving and it's part of the process.

Failure is part of the process. Okay, let's go with failure. Let's look at a frame. Look at this. Welcome it, frame it. So you want to have a growth, mindset values, not aggression.

Mindset, it's a stuck mindset. This is kind of can be a stuck mindset. You want to have a growth mindset and cultivate that. So one you can embrace your imperfections. You're not perfect. No one is no one is.

You know, I didn't realize that for a long time at being a perfectionist. I thought it was just me That was perfect and everybody else had together, but everyone is imperfect. And that that took a long time to figure that out. I don't know why, but I was stuck. So you can reframe the failure as an opportunity I think there's that Chinese philosophy that says that chaos in chaos is opportunity. And there's a symbol for that.

I can't recall what it is. So reframe right failure as an opportunity, reframe failure as a, you know, a step in the process. It means you're moving. It means you're moving. That's huge. Okay.

Five you know, develop your self talk, so that it's encouraging encouraging self Talk instead of saying God, I fail all the time set Yeah, I sometimes fail. Just reframe it. Right? Just move the frame a little bit. reframe. So you have a new way of looking at it.

That reframe is, is a positive take on it, not negative. Just reframe it. Have an always learning mentality of an always learning mindset. That's what I have. I can't stop learning. I love learning.

And maybe there's an element of insecurity in that but it's good. Not all insecurity is bad because it keeps you Moving not, you know, all perfectionism isn't totally bad because it keeps you striving to get better. So it's sort of taking imperfection, taking the failures and harnessing them. And taking those struggles right and changing them, reframing them into actions that affect change, you know, positive change. And that's how you transform those things and you know, succeed and deal with all the junk that comes up with all the obstacles and inside and out, that try to keep you down. And just one more thing we want to make this habit right habit.

And that way we can build some consistency into our lives. And we can do that in three steps. So if it doesn't become a habit and with just drops off, then our goals will get done and will fail and our goals will forget about them. And we'll have that goal failure feeling. And, you know, we're going to feel frustrated, let down like a failure and all that sort of stuff. So, habit building, step one.

Start small. Number two, planet that's the hardest part right planet into your day and write it down. Have it somewhere or it can be seen. Because if it's not seen, you'll forget about it. Put it on, you know, your sketchbook, your calendar in OneNote somewhere in your computer using notes. And then step three.

This is big. This is part of your commitment, I think is in the compassion and empathy is to reward yourself. That's like, super big right? reward yourself. Gotta give yourself that reward. It's gonna give you that positive feeling that you need to keep moving forward.

Reward yourself. For example, you know, after I complete this, I'm going to, you know, by myself that special thing that you want, you know, maybe it's take yourself out to dinner, to that special kind of food and place that you like, maybe you'll buy yourself some kind of treat. Maybe it's some equipment that you want, maybe it's you'll go on a trip. Right could be small, could be big to some incentive. You know, and you could say, you know, I will do this by, you know, in one week by one week. Going one week after I finished my goal, I'll do this right after I achieve a goal, I will do B and B will happen in one week.

Okay? It could be you know, after two weeks after two weeks of doing this, of, you know, keeping these, setting these goals and keeping it a habit, right, you need to reward yourself consistently. So after two weeks, I will dot dot dot, you name it, right. Maybe I'll, I will go somewhere. First one was no by myself something, then I'll go somewhere, maybe it's a little bit bigger incentive. A little bit bigger reward.

And then after one month I will do something, you know, maybe I'll go somewhere, maybe I'll do something. Maybe I'll take a class with the famous teacher whose work that I like. You know, maybe I'll go somewhere with my boyfriend or girlfriend. Maybe I'll just sleep. Just be clear to myself, all this stuff is just to be good for yourself good to yourself. And it's a feedback loop because the more you feel good and do good, then you're going to want to work.

Right? You'll work you'll do more work. You'll have the fuel, you'll have the one two and you need that one too. So that's pretty much it for goals. I'm going to leave this goal template setting for you. It's like a thing that I developed.

And I'll put it there for you, if it can help you do all this stuff. And just keep it simple, right? Just do one main goal, like we talked about. Over here, just get one main goal and get your micro goals. set a date. track your progress, right.

If you can write out some of that commitment stuff and those affirmation things. It's all going to help. It takes time but just right, we're trying not to waste time. This is good time. Taking it's not wasted time. Okay, it's beneficial.

So good luck with that. And we'll see you in the next objective. All right.