Goal Setting for Totally Ordinary People

First up, I hope no one found the title of this episode offensive. It wasn’t supposed to sound like like I am saying you’re not special. You are very special, I promise. 

99.9% of the world’s population are ordinary. It’s not an insult, it’s just a fact. I’m ordinary - I have a job that pays my bills, I wipe my kids bum several times a day and I have to save up to buy things. I drive myself places in my very ordinary car. I spend most evenings with my ordinary partner with our ordinary kid. I personally think they’re the most brilliant people on the planet and I’m singularly the luckiest woman in existence but in the world wide sense, our little family is ordinary. The Kardashians aren’t ordinary. Oprah isn’t ordinary. Mariah Carey who famously doesn’t carry cash isn’t ordinary. Most of the rest of us are. And I don’t mean that because we aren’t famous or rich none of us are amazing or that we don’t matter. There are sparkly gem humans everywhere. 

I’m just differentiating us regular folk from the folk that have the microphones and the money and the resources to do whatever the hell they want. It’s not realistic to look at them for advice. They can’t help us. We need to set goals from where we are, not where they are. 

Perfectionism and imposter syndrome are insidious and they’re directly linked to goal setting failure. We reach for the stars - 30 kilo weight loss, a property portfolio with 10 plus properties, 50 thousand dollars in our savings account, being married with 2.5 kids by the time we’re 30, climbing Mount Everest, competing in the olympics. For us ordinary people it seems like anything less than that is kind of pointless.

Trust me mate, it’s not. 

We need to take the glamour, pressure and unrealistic expectations away from goal setting and be a bit more chill about it. 

If you’re interested in anything you heard about on today’s show just click here for the show notes. 

There's also a bonus Goal Setting for Ordinary People Handbook available to compliment this episode - you can grab it on Patreon here.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.