Goals for Direction, not Destination

What if your goals are not meant to be a final destination, but a trail marker helping you find your direction?

In this solo episode of Wellness in Every Season, Autumn Carter explores how goals can guide us without trapping us. By the middle of the year, many people feel discouraged because their goals have shifted, stalled, or fallen off completely. But instead of seeing that as failure, Autumn invites listeners to view goals as part of a living, breathing journey.

This episode breaks down how SMART goals can be useful while still leaving room for growth, recalibration, and real life. Autumn shares personal reflections from her own education, wellness journey, and healing after a car accident, reminding listeners that goals should support the life they actually want—not just check off a box society told them to chase.

Through the lens of the eight dimensions of wellness, Autumn encourages listeners to ask whether their goals still align emotionally, physically, spiritually, socially, financially, intellectually, environmentally, and professionally. This episode is a grounding reminder that progress is not always straight, success does not have to happen on someone else’s timeline, and sometimes the trail changes because you are finally listening to yourself.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Today we're going to be talking about goals. We are in the middle of May. Some of our goals have maybe fallen off the wayside. But we're going to talk about how they're giving you your direction. And it's about the direction and not your destination. So let's dive into this. Welcome to Wellness in Every Season. We talk all things wellness to help you align yourself, align with your goals, find balance in your life, and just recalibrate yourself. If you are listening for the first time, welcome, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. And let's get started in the rest of the podcast. There are so many times where we set goals for ourselves, and maybe we aren't thinking about the direction that we actually want to head in. The goals can be because we feel like maybe our life doesn't have as much meaning or we're going with societal expectations. We can set goals for so many reasons. And we can get so frustrated when we haven't met our goals in the time frame that we have set up. Especially if they're SMART goals, which I love SMART goals. I learned all about them during my undergrad degree. They are specific. So the S M, you can measure them. A, they're attainable. R is relevant. So think about it. Does it align with your life? And then time bound. So you're going to have this result within this amount of time. And we can get so frustrated when we have not met our goals and the amount of time that we have. This can be frustrating towards people who maybe are above midlife age and they feel like they haven't met their goals that they should have met, air quotes here, should have met in their 20s and 30s. The thing is, if you look at statistics, most people achieve their goals in their late 40s, 50s, and 60s. And the reason why is they've had all of this life experience. They've learned how to fail up, right? Failing really is when you give up. That's not how we think of failure, but that's really what it is. So we forget that life experiences bring us this opportunity to have this success, whatever sex success means to you, of course. But the reality is that our goals are setting our direction. It's not we get to the end of this hike and we've suddenly met our destination. That's not it at all. Let's make this practical. Is there something that you are working towards or want to work towards and you feel like you're not making the progress that you want to make?

SPEAKER_00 3:23

What's going on there? Okay, getting the excuses aside, get through all the excuses you need to. Maybe you need to dive in deeper and visualize it.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Does this make sense with where you want to be lifestyle-wise, where you want to be enjoyment-wise, peace in your life-wise? Does it really match your personality?

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Or is this just another check mark? Probably one that you don't need, or maybe one that you don't need.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

I personally struggle with remembering that this is leading me towards where I want to go. It does not mean I actually have to hit this goal. Sometimes I have a hard time letting them go, and I've coached people around this as well. What it means is I'm getting closer to where I want to be, and I'm giving myself space to recalibrate that goal. Think of that radio dial back in the day. Some of you might listen to radio. Still, I don't, I don't like commercials. But it's that tuning, you're fine-tuning it. And that it gives you that opportunity to let goals fall aside or change up that goal. This happened with my undergrad. I started out with a degree program of public health, and then I switched to applied health because I realized that I wanted every class that I could possibly get on wellness. That was really my thing is how do I optimize my life? How do I make sure that my life is set up for enjoyment, for peace, for feelings of energy, feeling energized? And how do I share that with my family? And then how do I share that with other people around me? The greater world. This is before I decided to become a life coach and then put wellness in there. And how do I have all of this work so that I am living as long as possible? Because I am discovering all of this stuff and it's making me feel youthful. So how do I keep that youth for longer, that whole idea? So I've had many goals along the way, and it's they've had to change and evolve. And some of the goals that I've had, health-wise in particular, I've realized, you know, that's not really what I want. And right now I have the goal of I want to be able to hike five or ten miles, and I want to feel energized at the end of the hike and not feel miserable during the hike. So that's my healing goal from my car accident. So you've gotten an idea of my goals and why. What goals do you have that want to be like that? And then how do you trend them into smart goals and also give yourself space to adjust them along the way and to remember that this is your path, this is your journey, and you can think of hiking for this one of okay, here's my trailhead that could be wider or narrower, and knowing that hiking that you have your guide, the trail, and then the trail moves around, right? Your goal should do that too, up and down, side to side. And you're giving yourself places to pause along the way and observe nature. I do that. Went for a hike with my husband on Sunday, and thankfully he's used to me at this point, 16 years in our marriage, where he was fine with me stopping and taking pictures of the pretty flowers or enjoying the trees or taking a breath, whatever. This is what it should be with your goals. So that you give yourself that check-in time of okay, what's going on? How does this feel right now? What needs to change? Am I maybe pushing myself too hard and experiencing burnout? Am I not enjoying myself? How can I bring joy into this? Does this not work anymore because the career path that I'm on is no longer where I want to be? Or I was talking to somebody about this today. Am I dating the wrong people? So my goal is not going to be met because I need to seriously look at the people I'm dating and date very different people. What's not working, why, what needs to change? If you're really stuck, let's have a coaching session about this. But the whole idea behind this, and I'm gonna keep saying this several times to really get this in your mind, it's not about where you end up. It's not okay, I've achieved this, I'm done. It's okay, I've achieved this. What's the next goal? Because I'm thinking long-term here. I see the trajectory I want to be on. Even if it's fuzzy, you at least have an idea. And as you get closer to your goals, you can narrow it in, it becomes less fuzzy, it becomes more exciting, becomes more real. And the idea behind this is that you don't want to be, okay, I've achieved this, I'm done, and then become stagnant. That's boring. But then what's next? What is going to give you that sense of purpose, that excitement to wake up in the morning? What's your next goal that you want to have? Maybe it's around these different areas of wellness. Is there something professionally that you want to work on? Do you want to work on another certification? Do you want to have a career pivot? Do you want to work on getting a raise? Especially today, where wow, gas is expensive. Going to the grocery store is like going to Costco with how expensive it is, with a lot less in your cart than it used to be. Is there something socially that you want to work on? Do you maybe need to change up some of your friendships? Do you feel like you aren't connecting with your friends as much as you used to? Do you feel like you're disconnected from your spiritual self? And it's that concept of your spirit is bigger than your body. Do you feel like your mind and body are put together? That's really mind and spirit here. Do you have financial goals? Do you want to pay off debt? Do you want to not live paycheck to paycheck? Do you want to have more invested? Do you want to retire at a younger age? Whatever your financial goals are. Intellectual, is there something that you really want to learn that would give you that thirst of knowledge and make you feel like this is amazing? I feel like maybe this goes into social here. I feel like I have new conversation material. Do you have emotional goals? Do you want to work more on your frustration levels? Do you want to work on more of your language with emotions? Do you want to become more mature emotionally? Is do you have any physical goals? I told you mine with energy levels and hiking and wanting to be more active and in less pain. Do you have environmental goals? Do you want to feel safe and energized in whatever environment you're in? Do you want to maybe remove toxins in your house, whatever they can be? So I went over the eight dimensions of wellness there. But it's really helpful to look at what would the best version of me look like. And maybe take it there and then come back. Remembering that this is going to change and morph over time. Hopefully, this gave you something to think about. I will end again with SMART goals again to give you an idea of what that looks like. And if you want a coaching session with me, I can easily send you a SMART file. I know it's really funny to use the word smart in here again that goes over SMART goals. So you can start to set your own and go from there. But SMART goals are specific. So it's clear, very clear, measurable. So how are you measuring this? And this one, this can be the hardest part to really figure out is measurable. Achievable. So something you actually can achieve. And if you struggle with this, start with smaller SMART goals and work your way up. You can also start with a big SMART goal and then you break it into small things. So there's different ways to work on this. Relevant. Make sure it actually aligns with you. It's relevant for you, not society, not for somebody else. It's relevant for you and time-bound. Give it a target date. Otherwise, you're going to keep putting it off. Hope this is helpful. Let me know if you have any questions. I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that you found the answers that you needed and you had some amazing aha moments. Please share this episode with others because it helps us align ourselves and then better align the world so that we can seek the healing that we really are looking for. As part of the legal language, I am a certified life coach with a bachelor's in applied health. That is what I am leaning on for this. This is general advice taken as that. See you in the next episode.