5. 3 Steps to Get What You Want - Step 2: Plan for Results

Hi, this is Deidrea Kiesling and you’re listening to The Success Minded Woman, episode five. In today’s episode I am going to be talking about step two of this three step process that we started last week on how to get what you want. So last week we talked about deciding what you want and why you want it. And now in today’s episode in step two it’s all about making a plan and we’ll talk about planning over the next few episodes. So stay with me, this is really important information on how to get what you want. Alright, let’s go.

Hi, I’m Deidrea, wife, and mom to three teenagers, coffee snob, and certified life and business coach. If you’re a high-achieving, goal-oriented woman and you know you were meant for more, then you are a success minded woman and you’re in the right place. I’m here to help you make the money and the impact you’ve been dreaming of, to step into your confidence, create habits and systems to support you, ditch that imposter syndrome, and harness the power of your mind. If you’re ready to create a life and business you love, then let’s go. I’m so glad you’re here.

Hi you all, welcome back. I'm so excited to share with you this next step of the process and how to get what you want. In today’s episode we are going to talk about the fundamentals of planning and why it's so important to plan. And then over the next few weeks we’re going to get very tactical and I will teach you how to create your plan and implement your plan. So stay with me because really understanding these concepts is going to help you achieve your goals, your project you. And for any project you need a plan and I like to say planning for results.

Notice that I didn't just say planning, I said planning for results. Planning without expected outcomes and due dates is not really planning, it’s list making and there’s a big difference. An action plan, it breaks down your vision into goals, deliverables and tasks. An action plan promotes action, it creates momentum and results. You can't accomplish anything without taking action and a plan tells you what action to take and when to take it. Making a to-do list is not planning. A to-do list is just a list of things that you need to do but a plan is how you will achieve them.

The plan will include things from your to-do list but it's so much more than that. The plan is a step-by-step guide on what you need to do, when you need to do it and what the expected outcome is. So you all know I love a quote and I have a few that I want to share with you about planning so here we go.

Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. Love that one. As a consultant and project manager, I felt this one a lot with my clients. An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing. A goal without a plan is just a wish. There are dreamers and there are planners. The planners make their dreams come true and that is what we are all about here at the Dream Academy. The more the plans fail the more the planners plan.

And I mentioned this quote in an earlier episode and it's worth repeating. This is really one of my all-time favorite quotes and it's from Mary Oliver and she asks this powerful question. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” It makes me cry because it's just so, it is such a powerful question. So even a poet knows the power of planning.

Remember from last week when we talked about goal setting, once we set a goal we are not going to change it without careful consideration and discernment and consciously deciding to change the goal or give up on the goal. The plan helps you do this. The plan keeps you on track. The plan is your compass. A plan is how you will actually implement the project to achieve your goal. Now, here is where a lot of goals die, they are too big and too vague. Your goal needs to be realistic and doable and then you create a realistic and doable plan.

That is the only way you will actually achieve your goal. And that is why most people don't, their goals are too big and too vague and they don't have a doable local realistic plan so they quit, they give up. So let's say you have a revenue goal in your business and one of your daily action steps that you’re planning to do is to do a daily post on social media. Or let’s say if you’re in sales you have a daily goal to make 25 sales calls a day. But if that is not a realistic doable goal then you won't do it. And if you don't do it, if you don't take the action that you’re planning then you won't get the result.

So you want to create a plan that is doable with realistic action steps. Even tiny actions taken daily over time will create results. So if you have a weight loss goal let's say and you’re planning that you will eat no sugar and no flour at all no matter what. Well, some people can do that but is that really realistic for you especially when you’re first starting? Setting a more realistic goal would be something like I'm going to reduce my sugar and flour intake or I'm going to have one day of no sugar or something like that.

But you really want to break it down into realistic and doable action steps that you will actually do, not that what you think you should do or not what you would do in a perfect world where your only focus and activity in your life was working on this one goal. But we know that we live in the real world and even though we picked this one goal that we’re focusing on, we have lots of other daily tasks and assignments and duties and responsibilities. And that's why it's so important to make this goal doable and realistic and make a plan that’s doable and realistic.

So we're not going to set these unrealistic big plans and goals, you are not going to do that for your project you. You are going to create realistic doable goals and a realistic doable plan and then work the plan, that’s it. It really is that simple, create a plan, work the plan. So most people have a goal and then they start taking action and they skip this part of planning and that is why most people don't achieve their goals, they fail to plan. And remember, when you don't know where you're going it will be hard to get there and it’s hard to know when you get there.

You know that saying, are we there yet. Well, when you have no plan you can say definitely yes or no. There is no maybe when you're following your plan and you know where you're going and you know how you will know when you have gotten there, when you have achieved your result. Okay, the power of planning cannot be underestimated and I hope that I am starting to convince you of this.

As a project manager for multimillion dollar projects where I was implementing HR systems in corporate the first thing that I would always do when I started a new project was make a plan. I would even make a plan for the planning part of the project. Even just the planning part that could take up to a month or maybe for really big projects we could spend the first three months of a project planning the project. I want you to do this too. Set up some time for you to sit down and make your plan for your goal. Don't just think about it, write it down, make a plan.

And I’m going to be telling you exactly how to make a plan over the next few episodes. So in corporate when I was managing large projects if I didn’t have a plan I wouldn't be able to tell people what to focus on, what the expectations are or what the deliverables are or the due date. I could have the best consultants in the world working on the project but without a clear plan with due dates and milestones and deliverables and a defined scope, that project could fail. And the scope is what the project will be about and what's included in the project.

So in our case for you, for your project you and this one goal that you're working on and working towards, the scope is your goal and why you want that goal and what you will be willing to do to achieve your goal. The scope works like putting a wall around your goal, it’s protecting your goal and it keeps you from overworking on things that are not part of the scope, part of your goal. It keeps you from changing your mind. If you change your mind, if you change your goal to something else then that’s a new project.

So the scope, the goal, it helps you stay focused and it helps you create a plan and know when you are not on track and not keeping your goal. And this is where self-trust comes in. When you’ve picked a goal worth working towards, that supports your bigger vision for your dream for your life and the business and you know why you picked it, you probably will have the urge to change your goal or to drop it completely when it gets hard. Creating a plan and following your plan requires discipline and from that process creates self-trust. You’re building integrity with yourself.

I heard this quote from Zach Spuckler. He's an amazing marketing and Facebook Ad guru. And I was in a training with him and he said this and it just hit me. You know how sometimes when you just hear something and it just really resonates with you? And here it is, “Self-trust is a muscle.” I mean that’s so great that it's a muscle that you can work. When you trust yourself, when you do what you say you will do for yourself, for your goals and your dreams, your success really is inevitable.

And this is what I want for you for your project you. You need a plan so you know what to focus on. Your plan will help you develop and build this muscle of self-trust. And once you do this with this goal, with this plan you can do it over and over again. So you know what you're doing and you know where you’re going and just like a GPS when you tell it where you’re going you don’t keep changing your mind.

So one day let’s say I'm going to New York, you start going to New York and then you say, “No, I’m changing my mind, I’m going to go to LA.” Well, then you have to turn around and start going to LA. And then you go, “No, I think I’m going to go to Chicago. No. Then I think I’m going to go to France.” So these are exaggerated examples but we’re inclined to do this with our goals sometimes when we aren’t getting enough traction, when we’re not seeing the results we change where we’re going.

And so what happens is, is that you think you're going because you actually have started and you’re on your journey but you’re spending a lot of time and energy changing your mind, switching directions, trying one thing and another. So you really aren’t getting anywhere but you're headed towards burnout and then you stop. And that is why it's so important to not change your goal after you’ve decided to go after it. Every time you change it to do something else and then come back to it again it's taking up so much time and energy with no real result to show for it.

And this is one of the reasons why people keep recycling their goals over and over again because they don't have this commitment to their goal. They don't have a plan to implement their goal, to execute the action steps that are needed. And this is why planning is so important. So remember those dream stealers that I told you about in episode two? If you haven’t listened to that then I highly recommend that you do. We talked about those dream stealers of doubt, fear, overwhelm and confusion.

And planning is how you squash those dream stealers. So here is where we turn our dreams into reality. And there are four pillars that I will be teaching you throughout these podcast episodes. And these really are the foundation for this process to get what you want. The four pillars are planning, which I’m telling you a lot about today, accountability, mindset and habits. So today we’re talking mostly now planning but all four of these pillars will be part of our plan and we’ll talk more about those in the next few weeks.

So by going through this planning process it will ease your mind because you know you have a plan, you have a direction. I love that concept of planning to ease your mind. I learned that from one of my coaches, Kym Job. And it’s just so true that that's what planning does is it eases your mind, it relaxes you because you can believe in your plan and that’s where the self-trust comes in because if you trust yourself to follow your plan and you know you have a plan then you can have calm and clarity as you’re working your plan and going after your dreams.

When the doubts, fear, overwhelm and confusion come up and they will come up, you can go back to your plan, to remind yourself, yes, we are doing this and this is how we’re doing it. The plan helps you keep yourself accountable and focused. And the best plan starts with the result and works backwards. So begin with the end in mind. So when planning for results you start with the end, you start with your goal being done and work backwards.

You want to have the mindset and I learned this from my business coach, Stacey Boehman, she calls this having done energy. You know it's as good as done. You act as if it’s certain that it's done. Just like when you order something from Amazon you don't doubt that it will arrive. You should feel the same way about your goal that you are working towards, it’s as good as done. This is why planning is so powerful, it gives you a roadmap and tells you when to expect your package, your result just like Amazon.

Another thing that helps create having done energy is to break out your goals into process goals versus results goals. So this is part of planning, you need both. The process is how you're going to do what you need to do. The results are how you know what worked, how you measure your effort and your tasks. The results help you adjust your plans, change your process. And I’ll talk about all of that in the next few episodes. And so of course there are many steps, many things to do when we’re taking action on our goals. But the key is to separate the action from the results, the action or the process, that's one thing.

And then there are the things that you are going to do. My mentor, Brooke Castillo, calls these do goals. So you’ll probably hear me interchange these words, process goals or do goals. But these are the things you're going to do. Process goals are about the steps you take to get from point A to point B. Process goals are the way you're going to do things. They’re not the result that you want. The results are the outcomes, the results are what you will have achieved at the end of your process.

So there’s another idea, a really big one actually that comes up when people don't plan their goals. They don’t have this mental distinction between the process and the results. they don't plan the process, only the result. And I heard a perfect example of how process goals work. So on the show, Billions, there is this owner of a hedge fund and he is trying to get his team to reset their goals and readjust and sort of get clear and focused on this new direction that he’s taking the company in. And he tells all of his staff about this famous basketball coach whose teams had won lots and lots of championships.

And he said the coach never planned on the score. He never planned the result. He planned on the fundamentals and he trained and coached the team on executing on the fundamental. And that's really what these process goals are. You plan your process, you plan the actions that you're going to do with these pillars of mindset and habits and accountability. And then the result, the score they take care of themself.

So when you plan the process and the expected results, anticipate the obstacles, create strategies for the obstacles, figure out the skills and abilities, the knowledge and people that you need to support you on your goal. And you put all of that together on your plan with your timelines anything becomes possible.

So next week I will share with you how to create your plan, what should be included in your plan and how to use the pillars of mindset, habits and accountability in your planning. So your action step for today after this episode is to plan to listen to next week’s episode, to really learn the details of how to create your plan. And so I'll be giving you instructions and guidelines on actually how to do your planning. But what I’d like for you to do this week is to really think about what that goal is for you, to start thinking about what is realistic and doable for you to do daily, weekly, monthly towards that goal.

Start really getting in the mindset of this distinction between the process that you're going to use to go after your goal and the result of the goal. So just start thinking about that about what is the process you would follow. What are the skills, the abilities and the people, the information that you need to gather to learn to implement for your goal? So spend some time thinking about your goal and the process that you will need for your goal.

And you could even do some journaling about this and ask yourself this question, if I knew this goal was as good as done, what are all the things I would have done or what are all the things I need to do? And just do a thought download and tap into your mindset, your brain and just come up with all those ideas that are already in your brain, just ask yourself this question. And you'll be surprised at how much you really know that you need to do to get this goal done.

And as we create this plan and you start putting actions together, following a plan, you’ll get the result that you want. So I hope I have convinced you about the power of planning for results and I will get more in the details of this next week. Alright, talk to you all next week. Bye.

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Thanks for joining me this week on The Success Minded Woman podcast. If you like what you heard on the podcast and you want to know more, then head on over to thedreamacademy.com where you can sign up for my weekly success and mindset tips to help you create your dream come true life. Talk to you all next week, bye.