- Life is hectic, and setting goals can be an afterthought for many, but should it be?

Maybe setting goals can actually help us accomplish so much more in our busy lives.

It's about setting and accomplishing goals on this episode of Inspire.

Stay with us.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Inspire is sponsored by the estate of Ray and Ann Goldsmith.

- [Announcer] And the Raymond C. and Marguerite Gibson Foundation and.

- [Narrator] Friends of KTWU.

We appreciate your financial support.

Thank you.

(gentle music) (dramatic music) - Hello, and welcome to Inspire.

I'm excited to be here with my fellow Inspire sisters, Betty Lou Pardue and Danielle Norwood.

And we are talking about setting and accomplishing goals today.

And I know all of us are really busy.

How can we add yet another thing to our hectic lifestyles?

- No doubt Amy, but doesn't it feel good to set and achieve a goal?

Perhaps making goal setting a part of our routines can create positive benefits for our mental, emotional, and physical health.

- Yes, there are many benefits for achieving what we set our minds to, including that feeling of accomplishment that pushes us to create even more goals.

But where do we begin?

Here to talk with us about setting goals, holding ourselves accountable, and accomplishing our goals are Felicia Glass, motivational speaker and professional therapist, and Dr. Amelia Stockham, author of the Productivity Spectrum.

Felicia and Dr. Stockham, we're so glad that both of you are here today.

If I could speak with you first doctor, what are the benefits of setting a goal?

- Oh my heavens.

First off, thanks for calling me doctor.

That feels so weird.

(laughter) - Well you are, you earned it.

- I did, I worked really hard.

So I think there's a, there's a, there's a micro benefit and a macro benefit to setting goals, right?

And we know that you can have a task oriented day where you just are crushing it, but you're a hamster on a hamster wheel, right?

It's the same list day in and day out.

If you're not thinking one or even two levels up, right?

To say, this is what I want for myself in a year.

This is what I want for myself in five years.

You can kind of perpetuate the present without activating your future.

So I think that goals can really help us move where we want to go as far as our purpose and our vision in our lives.

That's certainly the larger picture.

But on a smaller level, every time we accomplish anything, our brains release a little like of dopamine.

And so, and that dopamine is the chemical in your brain that says, like, have I mentioned that you're awesome?

Right, it feels great.

That's totally it.

And so, you know, even if at the most basic level, if you're in a rut and you go, you know what, today is the day I actually do that load of guest towels that have been in a pile, and I'm gonna do it, and I'm gonna set my sights on it.

I'm gonna do it.

And you get 'em out of the dryer and you put 'em away and your brain goes, dopamine, it feels really good.

You feel so accomplished.

So I think you have an opportunity to feel great about little tasks and also help you create direction in your life.

- Yes, Felicia, you were agreeing with that.

Will you expand?

- I absolutely believe it.

So the idea is that we minimize the impact of dopamine right?

And recognizing that the small goals really impact the bigger goals.

So oftentimes people set these really big goals and they're like, I'm not getting anything done because they haven't saw the final picture.

But in reality, it's all the little things that I do to get to the bigger goal, right?

And so those little doses of dopamine pile up and you're like, oh man, hey, I'm the dopest there is, right?

(laughter) So we have to be willing to take all the small steps to get to the bigger goal, right?

But I don't want people to miss out on the fact that you have to start somewhere, right?

And so, even if I start with today of finishing that one load of laundry, I've already made it the whole week better by doing that one goal.

- That one thing.

- Awesome.

- There's a great book that I read a few years ago called Brain Rules.

It's by an author named Dr. John Medina.

So fun.

It's like, I think it's maybe six or seven interesting things about the brain that can help you just live a better life.

And he talks about, he calls them dopamine lollipops.

So if you're like, feeling in a rut, right?

If you like, set your intentions to do something and then get it done, you're giving yourself a dopamine lollipop.

And it's delicious.

(laughter) - So a lot of people went into another year, 2024 talking about resolutions, thinking about the big picture.

Should we have gone more into goal setting as opposed to resolution setting?

- I'll take it.

- So I have some opinions.

- She has opinions and some acronyms if she could throw out.

But here's the idea.

So truthfully, goals and resolutions go hand in hand.

I don't care which word you use, you're working towards something, right?

You're either working towards eliminating something or building something.

Oftentimes the trick is, is that we say here's the goal or here's the resolution and we still fail to put all the attention necessary on all the little things that are needed in order to get there.

So my 2023 started out with reading a book called The One Word That Will Change Your Life, right?

And so it was about picking my purpose.

What is my purpose?

What is my goal for this year?

My word was nia or purpose, which was, for me, it was about building my brand.

So everything that I wrote my goals around was about how does it feed my brand, right?

And so I had to do all these little things.

So for me it was three goals a month, and I had to achieve those three goals.

And if I didn't achieve that goal, I moved it to the next month, which meant I had four, right?

But it was about achieving those steps each way.

So here I am at the end of '23 and I'm like, oh my God, I can actually see how my purpose met.

I met this purpose, this goal was achieved because I did all of these little bitty things that I have all these sticky notes for 'cause it's like one giant sticky note.

I told you I'm a sticky note girl right?

So I have this huge five by seven, five by seven sticky note that has three or four goals on it.

And I have check marks with dates.

So as I'm reflecting over my year, I can say yes, I did this.

But the one thing that's still on my list is I have not mastered RFPs.

So it's like okay, who can help me with mastering RFPs?

So I think the other place that we find ourselves in a hiccup about goals is that we get into a place where we think we have to do it all by ourself.

When in reality we're better together.

So we have to learn how to lean in.

- I love that you read that book.

I didn't read the book.

I'm familiar with the phrase, and my word for '23 was telos, which is Greek for intention and purpose.

I know, I'm like, okay, then we have the same word.

But for me, it was about the powerful no.

- Yes.

- So for me it was is there are a thousand things that I could do every time I was considering what, what I was going to set out to do.

I said, what is the intention behind this?

Does this, does this matter to who I am as a person?

What truly brings me joy?

Or what is obligation or whatever that is?

And so for me, the word telos was more about saying, I am intentionally choosing what is a yes and what is a no.

- Absolutely, absolutely.

And one of my messages for '23 was no it's a complete sentence.

- Without an explanation.

- Without an explanation.

- Mic drop.

- I'm not very good at that.

- We do teamwork, yes.

No is a complete sentence.

I do not need to add anything.

I do not have to give an explanation.

My no is my no as long as it aligns with my purpose.

- I've got about 15 questions that I'm just like, huh, where to start, where to start?

But I'm thinking of, you know, our viewers who are here listening to this thinking, this is wonderful.

This all sounds great.

And I have people in my life who I adore that would say, just listening to you is making my colitis flare up.

You know, so how do you do, how does someone who's like the sticky note, ha, ha, ha, where they're like that, what do you say to them that just, they can't even, they can't even start thinking of putting something on paper?

What would you say to them?

- Go ahead, I took the last one.

- That's interesting.

I think, and honestly this is something that I've been kind of carrying in my heart for a long time.

It's impossible to achieve anything if you're trying to be somebody else.

- Ooh.

- So there's a thousand, there's a thousand books on, on being productive, right?

And so somebody says I bought this book, it changed my life.

And then it's like oh, so I buy the book 'cause it's gonna change my life, and then it doesn't.

And I feel like a failure right?

Or I am a little particular about my pens.

I do love a rainbow gel pen, right?

And I, and somebody's like I'm gonna get those pens 'cause those are the best pens.

And they're like I hate these pens.

Like yeah, 'cause those are my pens, not your pens.

And so I think the bigger lesson here is you should be as excited about what you're choosing as we are about what we chose.

- Yes.

- Right, you can't choose what we chose.

That won't work, you can't live our words.

But if you can't have the energy behind whatever it is that you've chosen, then I don't think you've quite locked into what it is that you're looking for.

- Oh, we have so much to talk about, and I have so many more questions, but we do need to take a short break.

Our goal is to be back here in just a few minutes to continue your conversation.

You see what I did there?

So please stay with us.

(gentle music) - And we're back with Felicia Glass and Dr. Malia Stockham to continue our discussion.

Now, before the break we were talking about if somebody has like a fear of writing something down, we needed to practice authenticity when it comes to our particular walk.

You wanted to weigh in on this Felicia.

Tell us what you're thinking.

- So my first thought is high five sis, because that is where it all begins, right?

So it is so very important that we create goals that are specific to self and not about other people.

So my goal should not be about oh, I saw that Johnny over there is on a path to righteousness, and I wanna be on that path too.

No, it has to be about what is speaking to your heart?

What is it that I want to, where do I want to grow?

And so, when we create these goals, the goals have to connect to your personal passion.

Your personal passion has to start with self.

So we cannot go out and achieve the world's greatest gifts, right, if we don't first start with accepting and owning who we are and being connected to who we are, which is why I live so proudly out loud with love and laughter.

If it's like, if the things that I'm doing do not connect to who I am as an individual, then what is the point of doing them?

- Right.

- You know, there's one other thing.

What you just said really resonated with me.

Boy, it sounds like I'm so well read.

I do like a lot of books.

I also watch a lot of TV, just so you know, but, but there was an author's name was Kevin Johnson, and the book was called, Where Good Ideas Come From.

So really kinda spoke to me, but there was the concept of the adjacent possible, okay?

So if I wake up and I go, it's my resolution.

I'm gonna lose 70 pounds and run a marathon.

I only run if someone's chasing me.

This is not, that is not, that is not.

- I'm probably not running this.

- Just take me now.

But I think that the idea of the adjacent possible is saying looking at who I am today, what do I know how to do?

What can I absolutely handle, right?

If you, if you're a new mom, right?

I've got, right now I've got a 6-year-old boy.

He is a riot.

He is so much fun.

He takes a lot of energy, right?

And so, if I'm gonna take on some endeavor that I've ever done before, and then I go oh, but Jim's in my way, that, not only am I resenting my current state, right?

It's keeping me.

So instead you go, what is a goal that makes sense to me?

What is the adjacent possible?

What's one bite that I can take, one step in the right direction?

And that one step takes us back to dopamine, takes us all those places.

But when we're thinking about resolving, what if we gave ourselves a little bit of grace and said what can I actually do?

What is one year from now Malia gonna look like right?

And it doesn't have to be everything you've ever wanted, right?

But it could be one 10th of the direction in that way, because I embrace the adjacent possible.

And that's, I think that that really is something we, we aspire to be too much too fast.

And my favorite quote, it was from some professor at Johnson County Community College.

God bless, I wish I could remember her name.

Too much too fast won't last.

- So true.

- Oh that's great.

- You apply that to everything, yes.

- That's true.

- Write a check with that.

- So by the time this airs, it'll be the early January and we will have made, had many people made their resolutions.

And I think at one point we were discussing earlier that by that point many of those people will have failed those resolutions.

Alright, how do you speak to that?

- So my first comment is, I think it's important for people to not rec, to not fall into the concept of, because I didn't achieve it means I failed.

It means you learned a lesson, right?

So now I get to, I get to backtrack and decide where do I want go from here?

Part of that is living in your day to day, not your future.

I believe that if we were to stay focused on what's right in front of us, here's my mirror.

This is what I see.

Here's where I'm going today.

Let's get to where I need to be at the end of the day.

Because if I compile all of my goals I make every day, I'm not gonna be the person I was yesterday.

So if I can learn to just be patient with myself, so I love that you used the word grace.

My clients are always like, you use that word so much.

I don't wanna hear about grace, but it's about giving yourself leniency, and understanding that the same way we expect others to treat us like human beings, we have to first treat ourselves like humans and know that we're not gonna achieve it all at the same time.

So I always say, take a step back, refocus, clean the lenses off, and understand that weather storms come along and they throw us off, but we still have to get back on the road and keep going.

You know, it's kind of like the person that stops in the middle of a storm.

The reality is you're not getting where you're going if you pull over.

But if you drive a little bit further, eventually you'll be out of that storm that's still sitting there where you originally stopped.

So keep going.

- Wow.

- I love that.

Truly, I think you and I were just like simpatico in our brains because I tell people, so what now what?

So you didn't do it, okay.

Whatever, now what?

Now what?

Was the goal a bad idea?

Has your trajectory changed?

Has your interest changed?

So what, whatever.

Now what, how about tomorrow?

How about today?

How about, you know we, we spend too much time getting mad at ourselves for not achieving what we thought we would achieve.

So what?

We're here, we're alive, we're doing our best.

And if you didn't get to use the thing that you bought, or the subscription that you paid for or whatever, so what?

Now what?

Try something else.

- Right, so one of my biggest things with people is recognizing that it is absolutely okay to stop.

- Yes.

- Right?

It is okay to stop, breathe, create a new plan, and then go.

It's kinda like sitting at a red light, right?

You're gonna sit at the red light.

Some of us have engines that are gonna idle off, but the minute we take our foot off the brake, it's all gas.

Let's go.

So I'm one for mirror writing.

Like write the goal in the mirror, let's, you know.

So if your message for today is let's go, then let's go.

Speak to yourself, encourage yourself.

We have to get to a place where we stop allowing what it looks like to determine where we go.

There's a lot of things that may blur our vision, but if we were to wipe it off and keep going, you will get there.

So sometimes you have to be your own motivator.

You have to encourage yourself.

So don't be dismayed by what you see.

Just remember where you're going and all the small steps that'll get you there.

- Love it.

- Be the scientist and subject of your own experiment right?

I think this is gonna work for me.

I'm gonna try it.

Well that didn't work.

A scientist would say data point.

Not complete failure, right?

Okay, now what else can I try?

That one didn't work.

I thought that was gonna work.

I keep buying bags of salad, think it's gonna work.

(laughter) Throw away a lot of bags of salad.

I do right?

Because it's like, oh yeah, but it's a shortcut.

Well, so what, now what?

It's not gonna work for me.

But that is I think where we have to go.

And honestly, maybe we could laugh at ourselves a little bit more too along the way and enjoy the journey of change rather than critiquing our lack of progress.

- Yes.

- Wow.

- And allowing people to go with us, right?

So if, if I'm down on myself because I I didn't do X, Y, Z, I think it's important to be able to say to someone, I'm having a real hard time.

I'm gonna need you to listen.

Put your hand on my back.

Put your hand on my back.

Now pat me, pat me right?

You're gonna pat me.

And so it's absolutely okay to say to people, I need you to help me be kind to me.

- Yep.

- That's beautiful.

- I love you both.

I'll bet you love 'em too.

We wanna thank Felicia Glass and Dr. Malia Stockham for such a motivating discussion.

And I think we gotta get that book list up on our website as well.

And we can't wait to set a goal as soon as we are finished with this show.

More discussion coming up on Inspire.

I hope you'll stay right there.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Linda Jakle with the Shawnee County Extension Master Gardeners, and I'm here today to ask you a question.

Are dirt and soil the same thing.

Soil is a living and life giving substance.

It's composed of finely weathered material, bedrock, and some organic matter, but it takes hundreds of years to form just one inch of soil.

Soil also has air spaces that allows water and gases in and out of the soil.

This allows the plant roots to breathe and to take in nutrients.

In addition to sustaining plants which sustains animals and humans, soil also filters and buffers water before it returns to our streams.

It sequesters carbon, thereby reducing the amount of greenhouse gas into our atmosphere.

So how do we conserve this wonderful natural resource?

You can use your lawn clippings by leaving them lay.

A lot less work than bagging them.

You can do the same with your leaves.

Run over 'em a couple times with your lawnmower.

This fresh residue from your plants is wonderful food for soil organisms.

By soil organisms I'm talking fungi, bacteria, protozoa.

I'm also talking those small little invertebrates.

Those, those worms and centipedes, they do wonderful things for your soil.

They decompose organic matter.

They improve the fertility of your soil.

They improve the structure and the workability of your soil.

They also improve plant health and plant defenses.

So after you've added your organic matter to the surface of your lawns and your planting beds, get a soil test.

It's very important to know what your soil needs and does not need.

When you water water slowly and for a longer period of time.

That way the water doesn't run off, but it soaks in.

And as it soaks in deeper, then you can water less often.

That way your plant roots will reach further down towards the water and they'll be more drought tolerant.

You also need to avoid bare soils.

Keep your ground covered.

You can use planting material of course, but also if you have a bare spot, add some organic mulch.

So back to our question, are dirt and soil the same thing?

Well, I don't think so because dirt has no pore spaces.

It has no structure.

It is not an ecosystem with living organisms.

I can do without dirt, especially in my house.

But soil, that's a different matter.

It's a valuable natural resource.

And I hope we all try harder to conserve it.

(upbeat music) - We're so glad you stayed with us.

What a great conversation Dr. Stockham and Felicia Glass.

Felicia, you are a therapist by trade and of course a motivational speaker that we all love.

But we're all talking about these goals.

There's gotta be some grief.

If we don't get our goal made we're sad, we're grieving.

Please elaborate.

- Yeah, so I really think that when we talk about failed expectation is the term people are often associated with.

So we always attach emotion to the goals, right?

So when you talk about, oh, I didn't make my, make my weight loss goal, I didn't achieve my academic goal, there becomes this emotional attachment.

Just like there's emotional attachment in relationship loss, financial loss.

The reality is is that anything you invest in, you will feel an emotional response to.

That emotional response can look like grief symptoms of sadness, depression, anxiety about when am I gonna get to the gym the next time?

Anticipating getting to the goal.

All of those are emotions and they're there because you've already made an emotional investment into being a better you.

So yes, you can totally experience grief symptoms as a result of failed expectations.

- So how do we move past the grief?

- So moving past the grief.

One, acknowledge I feel X, Y, Z.

Two, be able to experience that feeling.

So I always say, sit with it not in it, and then allow yourself to move forward.

That is where grace comes in.

So I extend to myself the grace to move forward towards the goal.

I may just have to reroute how I get there.

- And I think that grace, it's such an interesting thing when you say that because I think I'm not alone when I say sometimes I feel so stupid when I'm mad at myself for something that is seemingly arbitrary, right?

I said I was gonna do that laundry, and then at the end of the day, I didn't do it.

And I'm laying in bed and I'm going, I can't get anything done right?

I'm a failure as a mother and a wife and a professional.

You know, you know this rumination that happens.

And so I think grace also is saying like, it's okay to feel your feelings, right?

Like to say like, I'm sitting with my anxiety right now.

I'm sitting with my frustration right now that like that was a silly thing I wanted to do, but look at all the things I did do right?

There were, time is just a resource.

So if I didn't do that, what did I do?

And you can, you can, the myth, if I didn't get anything done today, you know?

And but I think that we do, the more arbitrary the failure is, the madder we get at ourselves.

And we're embarrassed.

We don't share that.

And I think that we need to be better about that.

- Absolutely.

So I want people to know that it's important to be able to stop, reassess, and then push go.

And so if we remember that my feelings are real, they are mine, I can own them, I can feel them, but I don't have to sit in them.

I also want people to know hey, I may not have achieved 10 goals today, but just because I had one bad moment doesn't mean all of it is a wash.

There's so much good left.

- Wow, this has been such a deep and rich discussion.

You know we need to have more discussions like this because we just scratched the surface.

But thank you Felicia Glass.

Thank you to Dr. Malia Stockham for joining us on Inspire.

And that's all the time that we have for today.

We hope that you've been inspired by today's conversation.

As a reminder, you can watch this program again at watch.ktwu.org.

- And if you're so inspired to learn more about our guests, find out what is coming up on future shows, and get access to additional content, be sure to visit our website at www.ktwu.org/inspire.

- Inspiring women, inspiring setting and accomplishing goals.

Inspiring you on KTWU.

Thank you for watching.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Inspire is sponsored by the estate of Ray and Ann Goldsmith.

- [Announcer] And the Raymond C. and Marguerite Gibson Foundation and.

- [Narrator] Friends of KTWU.

We appreciate your financial support.

Thank you.

(gentle music)