Filling out Your Wish List for 2024

0:28Hi, I'm Michael Hyatt. strings? It's my number one. No, it's not. I think so. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember because I just retook it, but I think it's in my top five still. Strategy is now number one, but I think futuristic's in there. Regardless, we're going to be talking about the future. Yes. And that's exciting. We wanted to help our listeners close out 2023, get a jump on 2024, and basically awaken a fresh desire? What is it that you want for 2024? I just recently had a church group over to my house, and one of the questions I asked them, because we always do the one conversation rule, salon style conversation.

1:06So I just asked them, I said, how is 2024 going to be different and especially better than 2023? And that was so fun. For a lot of people, that was a brand new idea. you know, that it could actually be different. Yeah. But it can be different. Whatever you're struggling with this year, whatever you're frustrated by, if you could wave a magic wand and have that be different next year, that could be a candidate for a goal or two. Well, I really like making time to let this stuff marinate before you set your goals. So at the time that you're listening to this, you know, you've got a little bit of time before the new year kicks off and you kind of got to have your list of goals and ready to march into the future, you can give yourself that space to think it through.

1:56And in my experience, if you just go right into the exercise of setting goals and you haven't given it any thought, you haven't been marinating kind of in that space of desire for a little bit of time, then you can choose goals that in the end, you know, you don't really care about that much. They're not well examined. So this process is designed to help you dig deep, really examine what matters to you now, because that changes over time. So that when you go to set your goals, they're coming from an informed place that really resonates with you. There's a lot of congruence between who you are and what you want and what you're pursuing in terms of goals in the new year.

2:34Okay. I want to just insert a pro tip. Pro tip. Get yourself a yellow legal pad or open up a new page in EverNote, you know, a new note or a new note in notes or whatever you like to take notes in. And just a scratch pad where you can start dumping as you think of them. I have a page in Notion where I do this, where I'm adding candidates for goals for 2024. So it's kind of like going shopping for clothing. You know, these are the clothes that I want to take into the dressing room and see what fits. Oh, I love that. Yeah. So that's a good thing to be doing between now and the time you actually officially set goals.

3:13Okay, when you do that, do you worry about how many you have on that list? Nope, I may end up with 20 or 25, 30, because I don't care. I'm going to cull through that. Just like when you go into the dressing room, I'm going to take more clothes in there than I intend to buy, because I want to make sure what fits, what looks good on me, all the rest. That's helpful. Yeah, good metaphor. Yeah. You know, just as a reminder, the theme of this season is all things, new year, possibilities. What do you want in the next year and how can we help you accomplish that? And so we've been doing episodes leading up to today.

3:48So we did a couple of weeks ago, we did going further by giving thanks and just the relationship of gratitude and achievement. I think that is so critically important. Last week, we talked about rescuing your 2023 goals, that it's not too late, even at this late date of the year to make meaningful progress toward the goals that you set at the beginning of the year. Today, we're going to be talking about filling out your wish list for the new year, which I can't wait to talk about. And then next week, we're going to be talking about choosing habit or achievement goals. This is something that people get kind of tripped up on.

4:20You know, when does it make sense to set, if you're thinking about fitness, for example, you know, a goal around how often you want to work out versus some outcome, you know, finishing a race or a weight loss goal or lowering your blood pressure, I don't know, something like that. And so we're going to be really digging into that. How do you know what's the best way to set goals in each of the categories? Perfect. And then the last one is we're going to be talking about how do you jump into the new year with confidence? So regardless of what you did or did not accomplish in this year, how do you think about the new year so that your mindset is in the right place to just get off the block quickly and make progress right out of the gate?

5:03Excellent.

5:07Okay, so 2024 isn't here yet. It's a blank canvas. That's how I like to think about it. Nothing's been painted on it. You can paint anything you want. But therein kind of lies the problem because a lot of us feel like there's too many possibilities. We don't know what to paint. In fact, I would say that one of the biggest challenges I have in my coaching practice with clients is getting them to the point where they're clear on what they want. Because a lot of times they don't know what they want. And some people have a hard time getting to that. And we're going to give you some handles for kind of excavating that out of your own heart and trying to figure out what you want.

5:46Because until you're clear about what you want, you really can't set any goals. You got to have clarity about a future state that you really want. And that's part of what we're going to do in this episode. Okay, so I have a question for you. This is not on our script here at all, but it just made me think about something that I bet a lot of you guys struggle with or have at least in the past struggled with. I was having a conversation with one of our kids the other day, and he said to me, I just don't feel like I know what I want. And I think that that's because, like all of us, he's had some setbacks.

6:22And one of the things that I find when I'm talking to people, when I'm coaching, is that your past failures, your past setbacks immediately start to replay like a highlight reel in your brain when you start thinking about what do you want in the future. And it can really shut you down from thinking about possibilities. So how do you overcome that when you're getting ready to dig into these questions? It's almost inevitable that that little voice in your head is going to pop up and start saying things like, yeah, but remember last time you tried that and it was embarrassing because you didn't accomplish it or nothing ever came of it or whatever your repeating line is.

7:04So what do we do about that? Well, I think we have to kind of change our relationship with failure. so that we can't see it as final, but as something that's giving us really important feedback. And here's a good example. One of the reasons we have kids do a lot of different activities, whether it's play football or get involved in theater or learn an instrument or whatever it is, is because we often have to try a lot of things to find out what really resonates with us and what we may have some natural ability for. And that's fine. You know, if I try, for example, guitar, and it just doesn't resonate with me and I don't like it, no problem.

7:46That's just a point of information that'll allow me to move to the next step. So I think we've got a process failure. John Maxwell says, you know, sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. Okay, so that's a way different premise than sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But if you can take it outside the frame of winning and losing and put it inside the frame of growing or feedback, then they're both headed in the same direction. So the loss can serve as well as the win. In fact, I would say that usually we lose more when we don't quite achieve our goals than when we actually achieve it. Because it forces us to deconstruct it and figure out what went wrong, how can I improve it next time?

8:29It's true. Nobody wants that to happen. But when we look back at our life and we say, where did we grow the most? It's usually from our failures, not our successes. It's true. Yeah. Okay. That's helpful. You know, the other thing that can happen when we start asking these questions about what we want is that the answers can almost come up too easily. And the reason for that is because they're not actually our authentic answers. They're not coming from our heart. They're basically coming from what's socially expected or what's being sort of fed to us in whatever our circles of influence are. So we don't end up being able to naturally or easily connect with our own desires for what we want in our life.

9:14We're really connecting to what we should want in different categories. This happens sometimes in families where maybe you had a multi-generational tradition of some branch of the military serving in some branch of the military, and maybe you're an artistic kid, but there's an expectation that you were going to follow in your grandfather and your great grandfather and your dad's footsteps and go be a, you know, naval officers or Marine or something like that. Well, that obviously, even if you accomplish that goal, you're going to be totally unsatisfied by it because what you really want to do is to be a sculptor.

9:50It's kind of the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Right. You know, there's these socially imposed motivations or oughts, things we ought to do, but we got to be careful with that. Luke Burgess calls these thin desires. They're not only mediated by those around us, they don't really have any substance. I think it's a good term, thin desires. As a result, they don't have the power to motivate real achievement or satisfaction over the long run. And for that, we need what Burgess calls thick desires, or I would call them intrinsic desires, something that bubbles up from within, something that really matters to us.

10:28It may not be important to anybody else, but it's something that matters to us. Those are the things that are going to provide the stick-to-itiveness and the ability to persevere to accomplish the goal. If it's just for somebody else, it's easy to give up on. Well, it's just something that's important to keep in mind as you're considering these questions, because if you either come up with a really easy answer that sounds a whole lot like somebody you work with, somebody you're married to, somebody that's in your family or your church or whatever, just be aware of that and just interrogate it a little bit.

11:01But conversely, if nothing comes up right away, that may be because this is a new exercise for you to really tap into what you want. And that's normal. It's okay. You're not doing anything wrong if it takes a little while for something to bubble up. Sometimes we just have to sit with these things. Kind of back to that point I made earlier at the beginning of the episode. this is valuable to do in advance of setting your goals so that you have time for your heart and your mind to let these things loose so that you can ultimately capture them and pursue them in the new year. It sounds kind of crazy, but you've got to set time aside to think.

11:38Yeah. And to reflect and to excavate. And you just can't, you know, there's not just going to slap some ideas together at the last minute, but this is why I like this exercise. And today we've got 10 questions to help you define what you desire for 2024. And these are some great questions.

12:01So question number one, what makes you feel most truly like yourself? It's kind of a question about internal alignment or integrity, but what makes you feel most like yourself? You know, I think when I feel the most truly like myself, it's when I'm intentionally engaging beauty in some way. And for me, that looks like being in nature. It looks like traveling and experiencing beautiful architecture, design, natural landscapes, often different than my own. And I think this is one of those things that is rarely urgent, but is very important for my soul, for my sense of well-being. Yeah. And for me, I think it's something that gives me the opportunity to learn.

12:56Yeah. Like when I retook the StrengthsFinder test again, Learner popped up at number five. I don't know where it was before. It's probably pretty high previously. But I just love learning new stuff. You really do. And when I do that, when I'm like probably for you with beauty, But when I'm learning new stuff, then time seems to disappear. It becomes effortless. And I just am totally absorbed in it. So as you're thinking about this next year and you're thinking about what you want for 2024, what makes you feel most truly like yourself? I'm not asking you, but asking all the listeners. What is it that makes you feel most truly like yourself?

13:35That's going to be different for everybody, but that's going to be authentic and core to who you are. By the way, one of the fun things you can do if you have a spouse and you have a good relationship with that person or you have a best friend or maybe even a therapist, these are questions that you could ask for their input on as well to just kind of check yourself. Because sometimes other people, people who really care about us, people who we have alignment with on our values, sometimes they see things in us that we don't see for ourselves. And so if you get kind of stuck on a question, that's a little hack is you can pull somebody in that you really trust.

14:09Well, little known fact, maybe not so much. If you're an Enneagram three, like I am, it's sometimes hard to get to this because we kind of process everything through the filter of how is this going to appear to others? Yeah. And that's not helpful in this exercise. You've got to forget all that and get down to what do I really want? Not what does everybody else expect? and how can I perform to their level of expectation? But what is it that I really want for myself? Which brings us to question number two, what fulfills you? Not what fulfills what you think your parents want or what you think your spouse wants or your boss wants, but what fulfills you?

14:56Can you think of something off the top of your head, work-related? Well, what I was going to say, I think my answer, this is big picture, but is creating. I like making new things. So that could be trying a new recipe. That's obviously not work-related. We do not have a food branch of full focus. Not yet. Maybe someday. That might be very unfocused for us to pursue. But creating is really important to me. And improving things is really important to me. Those are both really fulfilling. and so when I think about designing products or processes even that enable us to realize our mission in a more meaningful powerful way that's really fulfilling to me what's not fulfilling is solving problems that don't have anything to do with that and that's probably the hardest part of what I do is sometimes, you know, there can be just a lot of just operational kind of things.

15:57And that's draining to me, you know, as opposed to like, there's this really generative work of creating something that ultimately is going to cause thriving for other people. I think for me, it's a sense of contribution. You know, if there's something where I feel like I'm making a contribution to somebody else's life, and particularly if they verbalize it, that's very fulfilling to me. And I think that's partly because as an Enneagram 3, I have a two wing, which is the helper. And I really do like helping. Now, not always in the way that some people would like. Are you referring to something in particular here?

16:39I feel like there's something behind that statement. Well, some of my family might say, well, you're not that helpful. But I'm trying to be helpful in a way that's meaningful to me. Hey, I need your help on a keynote project later. So I know you're going to be really helpful on that because you're amazing at keynote. I am good at keynote. Okay, third question. What activity or relationship makes you excited about an upcoming day? That's a great question. Well, for me, it would basically be Joel. Anything with Joel. Really? Yeah. Now, are you saying that because he's in the room? Nope. And by the way, we should give credit to where credit's due.

17:13Joel came up with these questions. Yes. So these are fantastic. I'm winking at him. Joel and I have a trip coming up to Charleston. It's actually a business trip, but we're going to stay an extra day. And we'll just kind of tool around Charleston and probably find some old bookstores. If I know Joel, probably some cemeteries. If I know Joel, probably some great restaurants. If I know myself, cemeteries, I know it's listen, we'll have to get that man a mic and have him explain it. I don't know. Well, maybe that fulfills him in some way, but to each his own. Yeah. It's never boring. But I'm really looking forward to that day just being together because I love, I love the familiarity and the connection and the intimacy that we have in our relationship.

18:00But I love that as the backdrop for doing something fun and new together. You know, I, at the risk of sounding like a copycat, I feel the same way with Gail. You know, I just am so, so thankful for her. And we've been married for 45 years now. And I feel myself like I'm very blessed to be able to say that there's nobody I look forward to spending time with than her. That's awesome. And if I can think of it, you know, a day when we're going to be together, or like this last week, you know, we spent, because we were on vacation, the whole time together. I was just so grateful. That so resonates with me.

18:34But it's a good question. It is. Because it's probably something you want more of for 2024. How can I make more time for the people that really are important to me? And I think that the challenge of that is it may mean you're going to make less time for the people that don't make that list. Yeah. The truth is you have limited resources, limited time. You can't spend time with everybody. And Gail and I keep having this ongoing conversation because it's really easy to spend time or to give time to sort of random people where it's a one-off. Yeah. You know, the person that just says, hey, can I have coffee with you?

19:11And it's like a one-off meeting and you'd like to be able to do that. But every time you say yes to that, you're saying no to something more important and probably to these people that we should be connected with. And so I think part of what I want for 2024, and my friend Chandler did this, identify like who are the top people that are going to be in my inner circle that if they text me, I'm going to answer them as soon as I can. immediate, if not, you know, the next hour or so. And then, you know, who are the people who I'm always going to take their phone calls, people I'm always going to get back to and everybody else kind of optional.

19:47Yeah. And I think that one of the hardest thing for me to come to terms with, because we get all of us getting inbound requests every day, whether it's email or voicemail or whatever, but just because somebody sends you a message doesn't obligate you to reply. wow i feel like that's a whole episode that's that's a whole episode but just because i i send over the volleyball net you know a serve doesn't mean you have to return it yeah and when some random person sends a request i mean my favorite and i get these maybe once a month or so somebody that knew me from the distant past who i can barely remember wants to come in and they they want something from me.

20:28And so they want to get together. And it's probably going to be a one-off. And in a perfect world, I'd have unlimited time and I could spend time getting reacquainted and all that. But I figured out this week, I have 22 people in my immediate family that live within 30 minutes of me. That's so crazy. My immediate family. That could be a full-time job. I mean, we're almost to the point where we need name tags. Well, maybe not that. Once we get to great grandkids, for sure. Yeah, for sure. The name tags come out.

21:07The next question is, what themes emerge from your most important life experiences?

21:17Yeah, that's one that's worth thinking through. What are the things that keep coming up? And maybe if they're positive, I want more of that in my life. Maybe if they're negative, I want less of that in my life. And both of those can be handled as we look forward to 2024 and begin to set goals. Like one of the things that I think of is that my best moments involve people that I love and know technology. with the exception of, I would say, football and the Great British Baking Show, two things that I share with my middle boys. We have one football nut and we have one kid that really likes to watch the Great British Baking Show.

22:08And those are kind of like traditions that are very relationship oriented, but they're not like not around devices. They're not. I don't know. I think those are the exception. Otherwise it's like when we're at the lake together, hanging out, you know, doing stuff or the beach walking, like we just got back not too long ago from our fall beach trip. And I, one of my favorite memories from that trip was walking on the beach as a family first thing in the morning and the kids are like kind of complaining about it, but they kind of love it, you know, and I'm definitely loving it. I just could walk on the beach forever, but I love that.

22:42And those are really special moments. So people without technology for the most part. Well, it's interesting you said that. I think similar to that, I want more time in my life that's extended time with people I love where it's not just transactional. Like one of the things I try to do with each of my five daughters, and Megan, you know this, but I try to get with each daughter every week for lunch on a rotating basis. Now, you're a little bit different because we work together and I see you, I'd like to say every week, but sometimes life interferes and we don't get together every week. But we typically have a standing lunch meeting on Mondays.

23:20But that's different than when we're sitting at the lake and we're drinking coffee together, watching the sun come up, and we've literally got hours to talk. That just quenches a deep thirst in my soul. And I want more of that. Okay, next question. Which of your strengths interests and abilities might matter for your future? I don't have a good answer to this right now Worth pondering. Yeah, that's a great question though. You know, I I know when I got into personal coaching And I just do a very limited amount of this is basically one day a week and I have about 10 personal coaching clients But when I got into it on the front end I didn't know if it was a strength.

24:08I just felt like it was going to be important research, what I would learn from those interactions. But now I really feel like it's become a strength that I love coaching. In fact, I would say it's my number one favorite thing to do. And so as I look forward to 2024, I really can't afford to take more time, but how could I become a better coach? Are there any skills that I could acquire, any knowledge I could acquire, anything that would make me more effective as a coach. So that's something I really want to invest in because it's a strength. And one of the things I learned from Marcus Buckingham, who wrote all the books related to, or many of the books related to, strengths-based leadership, easy for me to say.

24:52That is hard to say. It is. Is that you're far better served to focus on your strengths than your weaknesses. Because you can only make marginal improvement on your weaknesses, but you can make huge strides in your strengths because you're already strong there. So I want to, I want to do more of that in 2024. Yeah, that's a good one. I agree with you on that because I also am coaching and I love that. And I just want to get better at it. Partly because the people that I'm coaching, I care so much about. I mean, I think one of the fun things about being a coach is that you become very invested in the success of your clients and you want to do whatever you can to help them remove the roadblocks that they encounter and achieve their potential and all that.

25:37And it's just so rewarding. So is.