Goal Setting That Actually Works: Aligning With Your Season of Life
Episode Summary
Goal Setting That Actually Works: Aligning With Your Season of Life
What if the reason you feel stuck isn’t because your goals are too big—but because they don’t fit the season of life you’re in?
In this episode, Miranda shares a practical and encouraging approach to goal setting that goes beyond motivation and hustle. She explores why your goals need to be aligned with your values, your responsibilities, and the season you’re currently living in, and how that alignment creates clarity, confidence, and sustainable progress.
You’ll also learn how SMART goals, written goals, and visualization can help you stay focused, build momentum, and improve both your mindset and your horsemanship.
Key Takeaways
How to set goals that fit your season of life.
Write your goals down and make them measurable to drastically increase your success rate.
Use visualization as a powerful training tool.
Trascript:
Well pardon my progress because nobody has the right to tell me what my dreams can and can't be.
Hey there, it's Miranda Allen and welcome back to Horsemanship, Growth, and Gratitude.
Today I thought it would be fun to do a little short clip on goal setting because we all have goals, but sometimes it can be really tricky of knowing, is this goal aligned with what I want this season of my life? Why am I not making progress? So let's take a few minutes to dive in on goal setting.
Number one, unfortunately you do have to have a pardon my progress type of attitude, right? You cannot allow anyone else's negative mindset knock you off course from working towards your goals because nobody else has the right to tell you what your dreams can and can't be.
I love how Clinton Anderson always talks about how he came to America with $400 and a bridle.
John Lyons, he said he didn't get his first horse until he was in his 20s just because he had made it good at work, bought five acres, and while people with property had horses, so he needed a horse.
Both of these trainers, as they started to work towards their dreams over the years, they had numerous people telling them that their dreams were crazy and that it wasn't going to work out, but they just kept adapting and they never gave up.
Perfect example. When I was growing up, I had a lot of kids that would kind of exclude me or pick on me at school. Like, oh, you're the horse girl. What are you doing making your horse a birthday sign, you know? And they just thought I was so weird.
And then years later, I find out, run into them later at a party or whatever. They're like, oh, do you still have horses? That was so cool. I was so jealous. And I'm like, oh, I see you were just jealous of me because you wanted a horse and you never had one.
Okay. And that's the thing. You never know where people's motives are coming from when they tell you you can't do a dream. You can't chase a goal. Dreams are unrealistic because it might be unrealistic for them.
Maybe they have too much limiting beliefs or fear holding them back. Maybe they're not willing to make the sacrifices that you are.
So yes, you got to have that pardon my progress attitude.
When I was in college, I knew the type of dream internship that I wanted for my degree. And I had advisors that I really looked up to that flat out told me like, you're not good enough. You're not good enough for this. You should settle for whoever you can get in with.
And I'm like, no, if I want to be a professional trainer one day, if I want to have goals of being the best of the best, I need to start by working with the best of the best and learning everything I can from them.
I'll never forget when I went back and I did my presentation, it was all, oh, this is so awesome. You made the school look so good. We're so proud of you. We knew you could do it.
And I'm like, no, you didn't. You didn't. I'm the one who believed in myself. I'm the one that had the structure of these goals in working towards them. Therefore, I'm the one.
I did it for me, not for you. That leads me into, here are the five must have when you're goal setting.
Number one, it has to be your goal. It cannot be your mom's, it cannot be your dad's, your teacher's, or what society thinks you should be. Because if it's not truly your goal, you're just not going to have what it takes to push through all the hard times and where you're going to be extremely miserable.
You hear it all the time on these interviews, on different podcasts, or these successful business owners are like, yeah, I became a lawyer first, because that's what so many of my family wanted me to do. And now I absolutely hated it.
So I went off and I started a marketing company and I absolutely love it. And now I'm doing 10 times what I was doing there because it's aligned with me and who I am.
Number two, know your why. You have to know in your soul what gets you up every morning and why you're doing it.
And that's what's going to allow you to keep fighting because I promise it's going to, it's going to be hard. You're going to have to work harder than, it's probably going to be harder than you think it is.
But you, if you know your why, and that's what gets you out of bed every morning, it is doable. It is possible. And a lot of times what we know we need to do, it's not hard, or I should say, it's simple, but it's hard.
Number three, you need to have SMART goals. SMART meaning specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. Specific, you need to be 100% clear on what exactly you want or else you're going to keep getting distracted.
Okay, I want to, I want to show horses. Okay, great. Well, what discipline? What circuit? What type of saddle do you want? What type of show outfit do you want? What patterns do you want to do? You have to be extremely specific and knowing.
Number two, it needs to be measurable because you actually, you have to see that you're making progress or else you're going to get discouraged and give up. Number three, it has to be achievable.
You need to be realistic while still stretching your boundaries because no amount of motivation will ever keep you going because it's going to feel impossible.
Also motivation comes after you start making progress. That's when motivation comes. So many people wait around for motivation in order to get going and doing the first step, but actually it doesn't come until you've actually started making progress and you're seeing results and then that's what's give you motivation.
It's the same thing of being ready is not a feeling. It's a decision. You have to decide that, hey, I am ready. I am ready to enter that show. I am enter, I'm ready to do that step that I need to do. And then the motivation is going to come.
Number four, it has to be relevant. Does this matter to you? Is this aligned with your stage of your life? Don't get me wrong. I would love to be a professional barrel racer one day, but right now trying to compete for the NFR is not realistic for the season of life I am.
I've got two little kids that I don't want to be away from home. I don't have the resources right now to buy $100,000 horse and $100,000 rig to get up and down the road. That's just not aligned with the season of life and that's okay.
Hopefully down the road I can get another horse and I can start working towards those goals again, but that's okay. I know what is aligned with my season of life and I'm aligning my goals with that.
And number five, it needs to be time bound because if you don't have an end date, you're never going to truly make progress because the squeaky wheel of your life is always going to keep getting in the grease and taking your attention away.
And that kind of aligns similar with you have to have a measurable because you got to see that you're making progress because that's what's going to give you the motivation to keep going. Number four, write your goals down.
This is a number one key to any goal setting because you are going to be able to hold yourself so much more accountable and you're able to stay more consistent in knowing exactly what you're working towards.
Here's some facts that I found.
So this first one comes from Reliable Planet. Only 20% of people set goals and of that 20% only 30% of those will succeed. That is only 6% of the population.
Another study done by Dr. Gail Matthews that I found showed that people are 42% more likely to achieve their goals if they write them down. 42%! So if only 6% of the population is even achieving goals, if you want to increase your percentage by possibly 42%, write them down.
Number five, plaster your goals in front of your face. If you want to be that 6% and not the 94% who don't make goals, you need to put them down in front of your face.
It can be vision boards, bubble maps, road out, I don't care, pictures, whatever. Just do something so you can see it on a daily basis so it becomes that squeaky wheel and it's those breadcrumbs that you're leaving for your reticular activating system to say, oh hey, that's important for me.
Keep looking for opportunities that are aligned with that. And next, once you have your goals and you have them wrote down and you know that they're truly aligned for you and you have a way to measure them, measure progress, next is so important to realize that visualization is going to be the extra sauce, it's going to be the icing on the cake, it's going to be the secret sauce.
Here's the crazy thing. The brain cannot tell the difference between real life experience and imagined ones.
Visualization is imagining in your mind what that event would feel like if you were actually doing it there in person, experiencing it with all five senses.
Just like how we use our reticular activating system, we can use visualization to program our minds because we believe we can actually achieve our goals because we've already felt it. If you don't believe me, hear this.
There was a study done at the University of Chicago in 1996 by Dr. Bleslato. There was three groups of people.
The purpose of this study was taking the group and having them throw free throws at the basketball.
Group number one, they were not allowed to practice and they were not allowed to touch a basketball for 30 days.
Group number two, they had to practice for a half hour a day, 30 days straight, practice shooting hoops.
And group three were required to only visualize shooting hoops for a half hour a day for 30 days.
Now for the results, no surprise really. Group number one, no practice, no improvement. Group number two, the ones who practiced physically shooting baskets for a half hour a day for that whole month, they had a 24% improvement.
That's pretty impressive. Now group number three, the ones who only visualized shooting hoops every day for a half hour, they earned 23% improvement.
It's only 1% off those who physically did it.
To back this up, a study by Forbes found that 67% of people surveyed believed that they had a greater chance of achieving their goals after practicing with some sort of visualization than had they not practiced visualizing.
And the idea behind this is that visualization can greatly increase the reps in the gym, so to speak, while we're of proper practice.
So when the time comes, our performance will be more second nature because our mind already believes that we've done it because we've experienced it in our five senses.
Visualization is something that I always practice when I'm riding, especially when I'm competing. A real life example, if I were at a barrel race, when I'm warming up my horse, I am going to find a little quiet space off to the side and I'm going to picture the run in front of me.
I'm going to picture how my body is going to feel centered in the saddle and how the reins are going to feel in my hands and how I'm going to have two hands on the reins and how it's going to feel through my whole body as I'm riding into the alleyway.
How to put my right foot a little bit forward and I'm going to pick up just a little bit on my inside rein.
How I'm going to set my horse up for that right lead and how it's going to feel as I'm heading to the first barrel and I'm going to visualize, okay, this is where I'm going to sit down. This is where I'm going to pick up. This is where I'm going to kiss. This is where I'm going to do this and that.
How I'm going to leave the first barrel on my way to the second and I'm going to go through the entire run all the way down to, okay, this is how I'm going to exit the arena and this is how I'm going to release the reins and pet my horse's neck as they walk out.
I visualize every detail of that run a couple of times at least using all of my senses. That way when I go into the actual arena, my confidence is already there of, oh, we've already made this run. I'm going to hit my spots, right? I've already practiced this.
I know where to ask my horse to rate. I know where to ask my horse to turn. I know where to ask my horse to accelerate.
So I want you to try doing this the next time you're riding.
This is something that I felt like was really, the point was really driven home in my clinic that I wrote in last fall with Phil Haugen is when you're asking your horse to even just do some lateral flexion, visualize how you're going to pick up the rein, visualize how you're going to slide your hand down, how you're going to squeeze with all five fingers around the reins, how you're going to bring your hands kind of out and around, how you're going to stab your thigh with it, right?
How you're going to position your inside leg and how you're going to wait and feel on the horse.
Visualize even doing the slow foundational work with your horse, it really slows your ask down to the horse and it makes your communication 10 times more clear to your horse.
And that's how your horse starts responding better and better is because your communication is getting clearer. I hope that this helps and that the next time that you go to the barn, visualize your ride before you even get on and once you are riding, you know, visualize how you want to ask your horse to collect, how you want your horse to turn, that sort of thing beforehand so that way you can make sure that you're as consistent as possible.
Please let me know what changes have you noticed in your horse and when you're working on your goal setting, practice the visualization of how it's going to feel when you achieve that goal so that way you don't have as much fear because you know, hey, I can already, I know that I can achieve this goal because I've already felt what it's going to feel like when I achieve this goal and I promise you it's going to carry you a lot further than you might think.
I hope this works and thank you for tuning in to Horsemanship Growth and Gratitude with Mirandale and Horsemanship.
