A LOT with Audra

Ep44
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Introduction and Gratitude
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​[00:00:00]

Audra Dinell: Hey, happy Monday if you are listening to this on the day it comes out. I'm so grateful to be here with you and grateful you're listening. So thank you. Thanks for being here. If you have not yet, I would love if you would subscribe to the show, and if you like it, would you review? If you don't like it, would you please not?

Share with a friend. Your favorite episode. Help me keep this thing going. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you friends.

Global Leadership Summit Experience
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Audra Dinell: Today we're gonna talk about something that I very first started the [00:01:00] podcast series off with, and that is goals. So this year I attended the Global Leadership Summit, and this was probably my fourth year attending.

Maybe fifth and my business, the thread has been involved in the Global Leadership Summit at our host site. Every year since the second year I learned about it. I attended the first year and we have been lucky to partner ever since.

John Acuff's Influence
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Audra Dinell: So one of the talks we listened to this year at the Global Leadership Summit was by John Acuff, and I learned about him several years ago and have just become a big fan of his work.

One of his books that I. Own bought it at the Global Leadership Summit this year, and I hesitate because I have not read it yet, [00:02:00] but one of the books I bought from him was, all It Takes is a goal and. And so as a part of the Global Leadership Summit, they have this program where you can be a GLS next leader.

And this might just be for my local community. I'm not exactly sure how far the extent goes, but we partnered with nonprofit here. And I get to help spread this content around my community for the next year. So today I hosted a session with a really great group of professionals and we were focusing on John ufs.

Procrastination and Goals
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Audra Dinell: All it Takes is a goal, procrastination talk at Global Leadership Summit. So. We kicked off the conversation by introducing ourselves, talking about what we do for work, and then I asked one question.

Defining Relationship with Goals
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Audra Dinell: I [00:03:00] said, tell me what your relationship is with goals in one word, and here are the words that came up haphazard, complicated.

Motivating, varied competitive chaos, overwhelmed and flip flop. So while some of those words were words that were maybe positively oriented, when the word goals come up, a lot of them felt heavier, felt messier.

Complicated Relationship with Goals
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Audra Dinell: And you know, if you listen to one of my very first episodes on goals I have so, so, so been in that season and I would say, and this was my word, my relationships with my relationship with goals is complicated because I can just be really on fire and really into it.

And then really [00:04:00] like trying to be present and live my life and don't wanna look at a spreadsheet. And so I guess I would say. My relationship with goals might be complicated, but it's really also the systems behind it that are the most complicated, right? That's that's the case for me.

Challenges in Goal Setting
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Audra Dinell: You might be in the same boat where you set too many goals.

We talked about that today. You might be in a boat where you feel like you set goals. And you're good at the dreaming and the planning, but you're not good at actually executing on those goals. You might be someone who has gotten really good at gamifying your goals. The point is I just know that I'm not alone and that, you know, today's conversation really brought up some heavy words around the topic of goals.

So I want to share a couple of things I am learning in this [00:05:00] season about goals.

Learning the Power of Quarter Turns
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Audra Dinell: And the first one is this, I am learning. The power of quarter turns. So recently my husband and I went and did a focus lab in Oregon. If you are watching this and notice my beanie, that's because I went to Portland and now I wore beanies.

No, for real, it has been cold and rainy here, and it's a worthy of Beanie Weather Day. That is neither here nor there. So this concept or this really phrase quarter turns, was introduced to me during the focus lab. I really liked it. It really stuck with me. There's many ways to say this, but I liked the idea of quarter turns.

I think about when I've taken cycling classes in the past and you know, you're trying to turn up the intensity. You're on a hill, and so it's like quarter turn. And I think we can really apply it to goals. And I would say this is what I am probably learning right now in this season of life [00:06:00] in the last quarter of the year, as I approach a milestone birthday as I've hit, you know, a milestone anniversary in my marriage and my business, the power of quarter turns.

Implementing Quarter Turns in Life
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Audra Dinell: So quarter turns are just taking small steps. One bite of the elephant towards. The life we want. I am a person who, if I had the choice, would rather blow things up and get big and shiny and fun and high energy. Quarter turns have not always been my strong suit that can consistent, slow, steady progress.

But in this season, I'm. Really opening my eyes to how important that can be. I am lucky to work with two women on my team, both Kendra and Kristen. They are so good at quarter turns, they are so good at little [00:07:00] tweaks and working with them over the past several years, I have just seen their efforts and seen the results they've gotten from those efforts and.

I really began to believe that perhaps that option was available to me. Perhaps consistency and discipline didn't need to mean perfection. It just meant quarter turns in the right direction. So I'm thinking in my life like little things. So for us maybe you are the same.

Family Routine Adjustments
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Audra Dinell: Transitions can be so hard in my house and This weekend. My husband and I were going on. A walk and we were talking about our evening routine, and I don't know about for your family, but for my family, transitions can be a little rough and it's like we have done the same thing for years with bedtime.

I mean bath book bed, right? That's the formula we were all [00:08:00] given when I became a parent. We did that. We do that. Nothing has changed. However, it just seems like bedtime brings out the sies, right? So we were kind of talking about like, how do we divide and conquer during this hour of bedtime? And we came up with the nightly three where it's, you know, when one kid is in the bath, the other kid is working on his nightly three.

He is checking the school menu to see if he wants to have home luncher. School lunch the next day he is checking the weather to see what outfit he needs to pick out for tomorrow, and then he is also looking at the calendar to see is there anything special that I need to get prepared for? Is it a theme day?

Do I have homework due? Stuff like that. And so that's something I would consider to be a quarter turn that we have made in our family. And I mean, we just implemented [00:09:00] this, so we are, we are not like deep in it, but that little quarter turn, you know, instead of like blowing it all up and saying you're going to bed an hour early, which.

I kind of wanna do, to be honest, or you are having this consequence instead trying to implement this quarter turn and give them something to focus on so that they don't, you know, ratchet it up at bedtime.

Quarter Turns in Nutrition
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Audra Dinell: So one of the quarter turns I have made this year that I have seen a lot of success in. So even though I just learned about the phrase.

This fall, earlier this year, I worked with a partner on my nutrition and learned about the ingredients that inflame my body in particular through this blood test. And so a quarter turn that I have made, and this is probably really what has started to [00:10:00] open my eyes to it too, of like, wow, that was. That was way easier than I thought.

This quarter turn that I made was, you know, I took this blood test, finally, we're not gonna talk about how long it took me to actually take it after I received it, but I took this blood test, found out what inflames my body, and simply started trying to avoid. There were two top ones that were like, red, red, red, this super inflames you.

One was something that is in many, many packaged things. Even things such as like pita and, you know, we would eat pita pockets. Cory would make some really great like chicken and taki sauce, pita wraps. So there was this one ingredient that I found in a lot of foods in my house. So my quarter turn was simply like, stop buying foods with that ingredient in it.

And when I'm home, if we do have foods in the house that have that ingredient in it, just stop consuming them. And so really that was [00:11:00] the biggest tweak I made. I don't think that's very. Major, I would consider that a quarter term, and I really saw some major health benefits from it. You know, a couple months in and I wasn't tracking anything.

I don't even know, I can't even remember when I got this test back, but a couple, I mean, maybe it was a couple months in, I would say three weeks ago, I jumped on the scale and I was like, whoa. I am back at the weight I was when we moved to the Midwest from Honolulu. I don't know if you know this, but food in the Midwest is very different, a little less fresh than island food and a little more buttery and mayo and cheesy.

But that definitely took a toll on my weight, just moving back to the Midwest and kind of. Resuming some consumption habits in regards to what was available and what I ate. So anyways, I just made this tweak. You know, I'm, preparing to turn [00:12:00] 40 in the spring and. Thinking, okay, what is the number one thing I wanna do?

Do be when I am 40? And I was like, I just really wanna make sure I am feeling healthy and I want my health habits to be on point as I enter this new decade of life. And so, worked with this partner, got my blood work back, found out that this one ingredient inflamed me majorly. Cut that out of my diet for the most part, only when I'm home when I'm out I don't worry about it.

And it was just wild, like how easily I got a result by doing that.

Focusing on Efforts Over Results
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Audra Dinell: So I am lucky enough to work with just the most amazing women who are so good at reflecting things back to me and this week during a team meeting as we're kind of working on our next five years at the thread and what that looks like and systems and processes.[00:13:00]

Kendra reflected to me, she said. The things we're talking about here in business are the things that you're seeing in your life with your health. You're focusing more on the efforts instead of the results. And it was just like such a mirror. But I hadn't really made, I hadn't really clicked on that too, too much myself.

I like to let, like the vision pull me, right? And the vi vision is the result. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Per se, but like anything, it can be a double-edged sword, right? So I have been focusing less on like what I wanted to weigh, what I want my body to look like, any of those maybe result metrics, how much energy, you know, I have without caffeine.

I mean, let's be real, like I, I still have caffeine, but I was just saying like, what's my baseline energy?

I wasn't focused on the results I wanted to get. Instead, [00:14:00] of course, I knew the results I wanted to get ultimately, but I chose to focus entirely on my efforts and just keep going. One step at a time, baby steps day by day. Just keep going. One thing at a time, like you're doing good. I'm sharing with you like some of the, the self-talk I have had through that process of you don't have to be perfect.

Just keep going. Just make the next right choice, really just the next right choice and that has just been so powerful for me. So here is, that's kind of the thing I'm learning right now as I am ending this decade of the thirties as I am in this season of life. I am learning the power of focusing on consistent, small, doable, simple efforts.

Setting Achievable Goals
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Audra Dinell: And here's a tweak I wanna share with you that I [00:15:00] learned a few years ago. Instead of saying, I want to write a book, my goal is to write a book. This is just an example. My goal is to write a book instead of claiming my my goals in that big, bold way. Instead, I find it so helpful for my brain when I replace the word goal with the word result, so.

The result I might want is to have a published book, but my goal is not to have a published book. My goal, you see, is to start writing on Substack five days a week, 45 minutes a time. And to publish twice a week, I'm gonna take us back to the focus lab that my husband and I just went through. And that's something that came out of it was just my kind of creativity block of, you know, I'm doing [00:16:00] podcasting and I manage our social media, but I love writing and I haven't been consistently writing.

And so that was one of the things that we talked about, making a quarter turn for my life, my creativity my vocational vision. Was to simply begin building my writing muscle, and I do that by waking up and writing and then publishing a few times a week.

Separating Goals from Results
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Audra Dinell: So it's really been helpful for me to separate the results I want with the goals that I'm setting for myself.

I always want my goals to be in control, in my control because then I can actually measure them. There is so much. Let's take this book example about being a published author That is out of my control as someone who likes to write, but what is in my control? What I can make a goal around is building my writing muscle.[00:17:00]

Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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Audra Dinell: All right y'all. That's what I've got for you today. If goals feel overwhelming, complicated, haphazard, you're not alone. Focus, not necessarily on the result. Focus on the goal that you can set for yourself with quarter turns. That's my take. That's my process. I hope this helps, especially as we're ending the year.

You know, we're all trying to end strong. We might be thinking about the upcoming year and instead of throwing in the towel and just calling it a day, I really think there's a lot of power in this quarter to work hard. And make these little quarter turns and mindset and perspective adjustments so that we can be satisfied with where we [00:18:00] land and the foundation that we are going to start the new year in.

Okay, I'll see you back next week. Have a great week. Thanks for listening.