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You Goal, Girl: A Goal-Setting Workbook

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You Goal, Girl: A Goal-Setting Workbook

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Overview

Get your personal and career goals in shape with You Goal, Girl!

There’s no better feeling than when you complete a task and get to check it off your to-do list, right? This goal-setting workbook combines that feeling of productivity with the motivation you need to actually get stuff done. You Goal, Girl is a personal tool kit for making your goals a reality.

With this guided workbook, you will design your own goals and break them down into small, actionable steps. Because it’s not enough to simply write down your goals and call it a day, prompts, tips, and worksheets help to determine and then track your goal’s progress every step of the way, in addition to providing plenty of space to capture doodles, notes, and brainstorms. Included in this action-oriented workbook are:

Habit-tracking and reflection pages to measure progress
Gratitude logs to stay positive
Daily and weekly prompts to help you self-assess

You Goal, Girl is designed to help plan, track, and achieve your most important goals—because you absolutely deserve the life you want, you just have to put in the work!

Product Details
Read an Excerpt

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This book will help with setting goals and organizing the steps to reach them, all with the wit and honesty of your two best girlfriends. —Essence

Product Details

UPC:	9781631065750
Manufacturer:	Rock Point
Publication date:	09/25/2019

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

GOAL SETTING 101

A goal is something you have some control over. Things you can control: your behavior. Things you cannot control: literally anything else. You're probably thinking, "what's the point?" The point is that although goal setting may seem like an abstract concept (at least to us Type Bs, anyway), there is a right way to set goals — and a wrong way.

If you've had trouble achieving goals in the past, it might be because you weren't actually setting real goals to begin with. Let's go over what goals are and what they aren't.

Basically, any goal that relies on other people or external factors in order to be achieved is not a good goal. Your goals are set by you, so you should be the controlling factor. You can't control when you'll meet the love of your life, but you can control the state of your finances so you'll be ready when that day comes.

Getting a promotion at work is your boss's decision (and your boss's boss), but you can put in the time and effort to get there by showing up, doing your best, documenting your achievements, and, of course, taking the incredibly important step to ASK FOR IT.

You can also think of this as dreams vs. goals. It's perfectly fine to dream about living in a mansion, Kardashian-style. But how specifically are you going to get there? Goals are the steps you take to make your dreams a reality.

Now that we're clear on what goals ARE, what about realistic goals vs. unrealistic goals?

THE WRONG WAY TO SET GOALS

When you decide to start working on You 2.0 (which, for us, is a weekly thing), you have an idea in your head of what You 2.0 looks like. In our experience, the You 2.0 in our heads is basically Wonder Woman (including the demi-god strength, hand-eye coordination, and knowledge of seven languages). You will make every change you want to make, and you will do it immediately.

But realistically, if you set out to be Wonder Woman, you're going to fall short. Zeus didn't shape you from clay, and you probably weren't raised on an island full of women warriors.

In theory, setting high standards for yourself should still work out in your favor, right? It might. But you also might spread yourself too thin and only accomplish one, maybe two of your goals.

What happens when you don't achieve your goals time and time again? Well, first of all, it's not a very satisfying feeling. But more importantly, it can set up a certain expectation — that you won't ever meet your goals, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy — and then you won't believe in setting goals at all. It also has a negative effect on you emotionally. You don't meet your goals, and then you feel like you're a failure — which sucks, because you're not a failure. And WE believe in YOU!

THE RIGHT WAY TO SET GOALS

When you focus on only a few important goals, you're more likely to achieve them. You only have so much time in a day and so much energy in your body. The hard part, however, is actually limiting yourself to just a few of the most important, smart goals.

You've likely heard of S.M.A.R.T. goals before, but if you haven't, or if you have but you need a refresher:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Realistic

Time-bound

Example of a S.M.A.R.T. goal: I want to pay off $2,000 of credit card debt in the next four months; broken down, I'll make a payment of $250 per paycheck. $2,000 is the specific goal amount. I can measure how much I've paid each month. I've adjusted my budget and cut back on other expenses, so $500 per month is achievable and realistic. And I have a specific timeline to achieve my goal.

S.M.A.R.T. goals work because they're quantifiable, which means you can measure your success. If your goal is just "reading more books," how can you measure that? Reading more books compared to what, exactly? Instead, count up how many books you read last year, decide how many more you want to read this year, and decide on a specific number of books you want to read. Then decide your timeline — do you want to read twenty-five books this year, or two books per month?

BRAIN DUMP

The first step toward setting S.M.A.R.T. goals? Writing them down. You're 42% more likely to achieve your goals when you write them down, according to a study conducted by Dr. Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at the Dominican University in California. So get comfy, get cozy, and then do a goals brain dump.

The key to a solid brain dump is to write down whatever comes to your mind without judging it. Even if you know it's not a fully formed S.M.A.R.T. goal, or even the most realistic goal right now, write it down anyway. The brain dump is a safe space. You can re-evaluate and prioritize after everything is on paper.

For example, if your initial goal is something broad, like "lose weight," that's perfectly fine for now; write it down in your brain dump. Then later, with the help of the following worksheets, you can refine that goal to be "lose ten pounds," and your steps to achieve said goal could be "cook more meals at home, drink X oz of water each day, and exercise four days a week." But we'll get to that later.

CHAPTER 2

PRIORITIZING YOUR GOALS

Unfortunately, unlike our girl Diana Prince*, we're humans, with regular human DNA. That means we can't actually accomplish every single thing we set out to do, no matter how hard we try; so not every goal you write down on your Brain Dump will make it to your Top Goals, no matter how S.M.A.R.T. it may be.

But for now, sort all of them into the following five main categories:

Professional Development

Personal Development

Health + Fitness

Hobbies

Finances

Once you have everything sorted, take a good, hard look at the goals laid out in front of you.

Consider the following:

• Which goals would be the easiest to achieve?

• Which goals are most important to me?

• Which goals will improve my life the most?

• Which goals are realistic?

It's important to note that while we can give you questions to consider to narrow down your goals, we can't actually tell you which goals to choose. It's your life, and you know how to best improve it. So use your critical-thinking skills, grab a highlighter, and highlight your top goal in each category. If you happen to have two highlighters handy, you can also choose a runner-up goal in each category too.

If you don't have goals for all five areas, that's fine. The important thing is that you have goals that are important and meaningful to you. If you have four different financial goals you're hoping to accomplish, then maybe that's all you focus on for a year.

You know yourself better than anyone, so it's up to you to set your limits so you don't spread yourself too thin. You can realistically probably only really be good at a couple of these things at a time, so don't feel like you have to achieve everything at once in order to be "successful."

Choose a couple of these categories to focus on for now if you want, and then go from there! Or choose a goal from each category. You do you.

CHAPTER 3

ACHIEVING YOUR GOALS

Now that you've chosen your top five goals, it's time to lay the groundwork for actually achieving them. It's not enough to just set a goal and call it a day; you have to set minigoals (aka actionable steps) and figure out how to best achieve each goal step by step.

Thinking through each goal and seeing the big picture can be difficult, so we've laid out a few questions for you to answer for each of your top goals.

Why do I want to achieve this goal? How will it better my life?

First things first, you have to know your WHY. Why do you want to learn a new skill, save up a certain amount, or break a bad habit? How will this improve your life?

The more important the end result is to you, the more likely you are to work your butt off to achieve your goal.

What's the timeline for this goal? When is my deadline?

You're more likely to finish a task quickly if your boss gives you a deadline, right? So why should the goals you set for yourself be any different? Figure out how long it would realistically take you to achieve your goal, and then set a deadline for yourself.

Who will help me stay on-track with this goal? How will they hold me accountable?

Rome wasn't built in a day, and it certainly wasn't built by one single Roman. While the goals you set should be 100% about Y.O.U., as we've said twenty billion times by now, the truth is everything is easier with a support system holding you accountable for your actions.

You're more likely to actually go to the gym if you have a workout buddy, you're more likely to stick to your no-spending challenge if you tell people about it, and writing two books in one year is a lot more doable if you have a coauthor (wonder how we know that?). All this is to say that when you're coming up with specific steps to achieve your goals, consider who will help you along the way. And remember to thank the little people later.

What tools do I need to be able to achieve this goal?

If your goal is to lose weight, you'll probably want to sign up for a gym membership or invest in some home equipment. If you want to learn how to budget, build up an emergency fund, or pay off your debts, you could use our budgeting workbook, Common Cents, as a guide.

What three actionable steps will I take to achieve thisgoal? ICYMI, a goal without a specific plan behind it is useless. Break down your goal into three actionable steps.

Example: My goal is to save up $500 for a new camera. My steps would be:

1. Evaluate my budget and cut spending from at least two areas.

2. Sit down and do the math to figure out how much I need to save per paycheck and how often.

3. Set up an auto-draft to automatically move a set amount of money from one account to another on a set day each month (or however often you want the money to be transferred — it's pretty much the best invention ever).

What steps will I take each week to achieve this goal?

Take your actionable steps and break them down weekly. If this is a monetary goal, it could be saving a certain amount each week. If it's a fitness goal, it could be taking a fitness class each week. Basically, how can you measure your progress each week?

What steps will I take each day to achieve this goal?

Now break them down into daily habits, if possible. If it's a monetary goal, this could be something like cutting back on daily expenses, i.e. taking your lunch to work instead of dining out — so the daily habit would be packing your lunch every night. If it's a fitness goal, it could be drinking a certain amount of water each day or walking a certain number of steps. (We'll delve more into forming habits and how they help you achieve your goals in Chapter 5.)

How will I reward myself once this goal is achieved?

If there's a light at the end of the tunnel (like fro-yo, or a road trip with your friends), you're much more likely to stay positive and put in the work to achieve your goals. Treat yo' self. But make sure you're treating yourself in accordance with the goal. If your goal is to build your emergency fund, then your reward shouldn't be a new, pricey television.

GOAL #1

Goal: ___________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

Why do I want to achieve this goal? How will it better my life? _____

_____________________________________________________________________

What's my timeline for this goal? When is my deadline? ______________

_____________________________________________________________________

Who will help me stay on-track with this goal? How will they hold me accountable?

_____________________________________________________________________

What tools do I need to achieve this goal? __________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

Category: ___________________________________________________

What three actionable steps will I take to achieve this goal?

1. __________________________________________________________________

2. __________________________________________________________________

3. __________________________________________________________________

What steps will I take each week to achieve this goal? ______________

_____________________________________________________________________

What steps will I take each day to achieve this goal? _______________

_____________________________________________________________________

How will I reward myself once this goal is achieved? ________________

_____________________________________________________________________

GOAL #2