#055 – New Year is a Time to Set Your Career Goals

Goals and Word of the Year

[00:00:00] You know, goals are not just for work. You can set goals for just about anything. And I will tell you that when I learned the art of goal setting, it totally changed my career. So now that we are starting a new year, why don't we take a moment and talk a little bit about goals, resolutions the word of the year and what I'm going to be doing in 2022.
Let's get to it. This is safety Brye, your number one safety geek. Why do we have the behaviors that we do superheroes in the workplace? Right? All of those things that go into making you an effective safety manager. I love motivation learning, teaching training anymore. Just as much as I can safety.

[00:01:00] Hello? Hello? Hello, my safety friends and welcome to the safety geek podcast. This is Brye your number one safety geek and happy new year. Can you believe it? We made it not just through 2020, but we made it through 2021. Yes. Now I know things are looking dire out there right now, and I totally recommend that you just stay away from the news. It's a wonderful thing to actually like take a hiatus from the news every so often because they make their money by sharing bad stuff. So I know there are a lot of people out there going through some hard times and I get that, but I love new years. I am a new beginnings type of person.

I love Mondays because it's the beginning of the week. I love mornings because it's the beginning of the day. I love new year's because it's the beginning of the year. I just love fresh starts and the opportunity for a fresh start. Now,

[00:02:00] in all honesty, you can have a fresh start at any time. I can just say, okay, reset the day. It's right now, it's currently 10:14 AM. Let's reset the day fresh start. Yes, you can do that at any time, but I just love this holiday in the, and like the beginnings of things, because to me, it is a chance to have that fresh start. It's like something in your brain, just kind of clicks. I love new years, not as much of a fan of New Year's Eve as I am of just new year starting in general, my much better, like the new year starting when I haven't celebrated New Year's Eve and have that hangover.
But anyway, I digress. I thought that I would start this first episode of 2022 of sharing with you about what you can expect from the safety geek in the upcoming year.

[00:03:00] I don't think I'm going to share all of it because I had this thing about goals that like, when you share goals, your brain actually thinks you've already achieved them and it makes it harder for you to complete the goal.
But I do have some events coming up that I know are in the works and that I'm already partway through creating or have already created. So I definitely want to share those with you, but when we get to goal setting, think about what I just said there, sharing goals actually stops you from achieving your goal.

Strangely enough, I'll get into goals in just a minute, cause that's the meat of this episode. But while I have your full attention, let me tell you what you can expect in the next year from the safety geek. So actually what I've decided is I am going all in on our safety geek community. So I really want to focus on the community and grow the community over the next year.

And one of the

[00:04:00] best ways for me to do that is to have events within the community. What that does is it allows you guys to join not, you can join the community at any time, but it gets you into the community to see how amazing that platform is to use compared to all the other social media dumpster fires out there.
So over the next year, I actually have on my agenda, eight different community events. The first one is coming up very shortly. I had to push it to January 17th, but it's going to start the week of January 17th. And the next episode, I will tell you how you can sign up for it, but it's going to be a self evaluation challenge where I'm going to take you through my process of how you do a self-evaluation and we're going to do it together in the community.
So I'm super excited about that because I feel like self-evaluations are the secret sauce. To VPP programs. The other thing I have coming up this

[00:05:00] quarter is a safety bootcamp. So if you are new to safety or you just like new in your role, and you're not really sure what your first step should be, that's how I'm going to gear the safety bootcamp.
I'm not sure if that's going to be a five day event or a 10 day event or 14 day event. I'm still kind of in the works on that one. And then I have some plans for some fun events. Around holidays and things like that. So I think about Easter. So I'm thinking within the community, we can do like an Easter egg hunt, a virtual Easter egg hunt, or maybe you do an Easter egg hunt at your facility and then share the results with the community.

You know, like we did the scavenger hunt last year and that was so much fun. So I definitely want to redo the scavenger hunt, but different little fun events like that. Or we can come together. As a community and do them together because here's the thing about community and safety. So many of you are

[00:06:00] just a team of one. And I worked as a team of one for the longest time and I am very good at what I do. I hope that you have that same attitude, that you are very good at what you do. And I believe that the safety program I created at my facility. was like the best it could possibly be. But when I actually expanded my horizons and not just networked with other safety managers, but actually shared what I was doing and they shared what they were doing in a collaborative environment, it actually made my program like 10 times better, a hundred times better. So that is what I'm building at the community is not just a place where you can post your questions to get answers, or you can give answers. I want you to be sharing your experiences, your activities, and things like that because in the sharing is where everybody can learn, collaborate and expand.
So make sure that you join the community because that is what I'm going all in on this year

[00:07:00] is really building up that community@community.thesafetygeek.com. So that's what you can expect from the safety geek this year. And of course, I still have my courses and my workshops and things like that. If you want to learn from me more coaching and all of that good stuff, you can find links to all of this stuff.

I'm at the safety geek.com. But today, today, what I wanted to touch on since it is a new year is I wanted to touch on goals and resolutions and the word of the year. So every month, if you are a member of the squad, I do a community chat and we have a different theme every month that I try to gear the chats towards.

And last month, being that it was December, we talked about setting safety goals. I talked about setting realistic safety goals and how to make them more realistic so that way they were achievable, but here's the thing we want to set goals every

[00:08:00] year. Those goals could be, you know, safety numbers and things like that.
But what I want you to be thinking of is setting goals for yourself. I do this on a yearly basis, but the way I started was with something that I got from Gary Keller, from his book, The One Thing, and I'll put a link to this in the show notes, but it's called the One Thing. And the way that Gary describes it in his book and I, and I absolutely love this is that you create like a vision of what you want your life to look like. At some point in time, it doesn't have to be this year. It could be 50 years down the road. Right? What do you want your life to look like? And then you take that and you go in 10 years. So we are in 2022.

So in 2020 or 2032, what would you have had to have achieved at that time?

[00:09:00] And then you look at five years and you're okay. By January of 2027, what do I have to have had achieved to reach that 10 year goal? And then maybe you do it at a three-year mark as well. And then you do it at a one-year mark. So I've been doing this for many years.
So every December, when I start, I'm actually creating a goal, my 10 year goal is actually like, it's now like between. It's like the next step. How do I describe this? So like when I'm making like a five-year goal, now it's kind of like in between a four year and a six year goal, because I've been doing this every year.

So like, my five-year goal for last year was to be completed by 2026. Now my five-year goal is completed by 2027. So when you do this every year, you are just gaining another step. What is the one extra step that I need to make to get me closer

[00:10:00] to my someday goal, to get me close to my 10 year goal and so on and so forth.
And I know I am rambling and you probably are not following me, but the idea every year is that you look at your life as a whole, like, what is the big ultimate goal that you want to go for my someday goal, and that rarely changes. But as you grow and as you change in your career and your life and everything going on, your someday goal may change.
And that's perfectly fine. And that's why you want to look at this every single year. And you examine it from someday goal to 10 year to five year to three year. I don't always do the three year, um, to one year. And then from that one year goal, you go, what do I need to complete in the next 90 days to achieve that?

And then when you're in the 90 days you go, what do I need to complete this month to achieve that? And then when you're in the month, it's what do I

[00:11:00] need to complete this week to achieve that this day to achieve that. And then you get down to the one thing you need to complete today to achieve that 90 day goal, which helps you achieve the one-year goal, which helps you achieve the three-year goal, which helps you achieve the five-year goal.

It's an amazing system. I almost attributed to how, what I learned from Stephen Covey. So about 20 years ago, it probably less than that. It was probably more like 15 years ago. Yeah, it was probably one of the 15 years ago. I attended a Franklin Covey week-long time management goal setting seminar. Could you imagine? Five days of time management and goal setting. That's all we talked about for five days. And this was back when we didn't have smartphones and all your planters were done on paper. You'd go to like staples and get the

[00:12:00] different paper planners and all of that good stuff. Now I use a remarkable and my planner is just 100% digital.

It's kind of funny. Uh, but anyway, back then, I learned goal-setting from Stephen Covey and one of the best things. And this is what I truly attribute to my career of success was reviewing those goals every single week. So in the Stephen Covey method, you created a 10 year goal, and then you work backwards.

What do you need to do to achieve that tenure goal? So, for me, it was like going to college, getting my degree. Um, I knew that I wanted to, I think my 10 year goal was to make a hundred thousand in salary a year. So it was like, what did I need to do to get that a hundred thousand in salary a year and what steps I need to take.

So in the Stephen Covey method, you actually reviewed that 10 year goal. And. Every single month or every single week, but you were reviewing them often. So that's the thing

[00:13:00] about goal-setting is that you need to look at what those goals are and break them down into action steps. But what I like about Gary Keller is that you break them down even further into, like, what is the one thing I need to be doing today that will move me closer because you know, a lot of times we set goals maybe in 10 years, you want to be a regional safety manager right? And just you saying that and writing it down, kind of tricks your brain into thinking that you've already achieved it. You know, that's the salary thing sometimes too is like, I want to make such and such amount of money.

I want to make $150,000 a year. And a lot of goal setting people will tell you, you need to write it. Like you've already achieved it. I have, you know, earned a salary of $150,000 a year .When you do that, your brain is tricked into thinking that you are ready, achieved it. So

[00:14:00] sometimes that trick, even though it does build excitement and it does get your mindset into $150,000 mindset, because that is what helps you achieve those goals.
At the same time, it can sometimes stop your progress because your brain is like, no, we've already done that. Even though you don't have the $150,000 in your paycheck, because you've told yourself you've already done it. Your brain is like, yep, we're done it. We've done it. Because funny enough, you get a dopamine hit.

When you set a goal and say, and tell yourself that you're going to achieve. Or when you share a goal, you get a little bit of a dopamine hits. Your brain is already like, yeah, we've already done it. We don't want to do the work anymore. So sometimes you need to get your brain back on track. And the way to do that is by going, what is the one thing that is going to get me closer to that 150 or whatever your goal happens to be. So what I want you to be thinking of right now, as you are starting a new year, really take a hard look of where you

[00:15:00] are in your life and think about work. Think about family. Think about social, emotional aspirations. And really just take a picture of what you want your life to be like someday don't put a date on it, just say someday.

So for me right now, one of my someday goals is I want to be in a camper van traveling the United States. So I want to have a job where, and I definitely always want to work because I love to work, but I want to have a job where I have location freedom. I can record podcasts from my camper van post some on the internet, whatever, maybe go visit a work sites and do safety audits or something like that from my camper van.

And at the same time go hiking every afternoon, do adventure stuff on the weekends, wherever I happen to be within the United States. That is my someday goal. Now, in order for me to achieve that someday goal, I am going to need a camper van.

[00:16:00] Uh, how much is a camper van? How do I get a camper van? Do I make my camper van?
Right? All of those little steps they go into place so that I can achieve that goal. Creating the Safety Geek is part of that someday goal, because I want to have a job. Right? Cause Safety Geek is a job, even though I love doing it, that generates income that I can do online that I can do no matter where my camper van happens to be parked.
Right. So that is how you need to envision is like, what are the steps I need to take? And then when you're looking at those action steps, what's the one that I need to do this year and then start breaking it down even further, break that down into 90 days, break that down into months, break that down into weeks and then go, what do I need to do today?

And it gets me one step closer to that someday goal. If yours is a camper, Then we're buddies. Okay. So if you want more about safety, goal-setting definitely joined the squad because I did like a

[00:17:00] whole 30 minute talk about safety goals in there. So I just wanted to talk about that. And I also want to talk about resolutions because I'm not a huge fan of resolutions. Although I did one year set a resolution that to this day, I still follow. It's basically just creating a habit. Actually. I think I've done two that I actually achieved, and that was amazing. But a couple of years ago I changed from resolutions because I think statistically, they say that.

Like 80, 90% of resolutions fail. My son was saying to me this week, actually, cause he's a really big gym goer. He goes to the gym every single day. Like he's on there, he's on there, like most attended board or something like that, like 28 days a month or something like that. And he's like, I am dreading January because the gym is going to be so packed and I'm like, yeah, but it'll only last for three weeks.

And then everybody dies off on their resolutions. That's just what happens. Right? So

[00:18:00] I have not been a huge fan of resolutions because most of the time I don't reach them. But a couple of years ago, I came across the idea of choosing a word of the year, as opposed to a resolution and a word of the year is a word that resonates with you.
That to me, helps me meet my someday goal, that then all of my decisions and all of my activities throughout the year, I say, am I honoring my word of the year? And if you do a Google search for word of the year, you can get, you can get a whole bunch of ideas, but once you've started to do this, and then you're setting goals for the year, you actually start to recognize like, what is it that I am struggling with?

That I need help with. So last year, my word of the year was productive because I was really struggling with. Uh, doing the work, right? Like

[00:19:00] actually sitting at my desk and doing the work, the problem with having an online coaching business and an online courses business is that there is no set schedule except for my coaching clients who schedule time on my calendar and then any webinars or anything like that, that's scheduled.
That's fine. But it doesn't take up entire day. You do. The boss that is telling you, you have to start work at nine and you have to stop at five, right? So it's a beauty about the Safety Keek. But the downside of it is, is that I get distracted by shiny objects really easily. Or I would start doing housework in the middle of the day.

And then when nighttime came, I, I was not that productive. So I was wasting my most productive hours. So. My word of the year, last year was productive. And every day I thought of that word of the year, and I'm a huge fan of my intent, which is. It's actually just a washer, like a nut washer that you can pick up at Lowe's that has a word

[00:20:00] imprinted imprinted in it.

And then you can wear it as either a necklace or, um, I wear mine as a bracelet and I make one every year, I'll put a link to my intent in the show notes as well, but I put a word of the year and I wear it on my wrist. And then I take a picture of it. And I put it as the backdrop on my cell phone. So that way I'm always seeing my word of the year and then it motivates me to keep going.

Right? Or it gives me that little reminder. So I want you to think about what do you need to work on over the next year and what is, what is one word that can embody. That maybe it is career. Maybe that word of the year is focus. Maybe it's engage or network. Maybe it is coach. Right. Cause we are the coaches.

So like if you're wanting to move your career forward, these are the things that if you

[00:21:00] embodied them and you practice them every day, you practice networking every day, you would definitely move your career forward. And how could you network every day? Maybe that social media it's definitely within the safety community.

Maybe it's conferences, maybe it's committing to speaking. At add events at your local safety council, whatever, but pick a word of the year as opposed to a resolution. And I just find that that is much more effective in moving you towards your goals. Whether those goals are family oriented, community oriented, career oriented, a word of the year just works much better than resolution because when you fail at that resolution, it is way more detrimental. To your mindset, then it is, uh, when you are just maybe not embodying your word as much because having my

[00:22:00] word as productive last year, there were definitely times I was not productive, but I would have my bracelet and I would remember, and it would actually stop me in my tracks.

So let's say that I went down a YouTube rabbit hole. In the middle of the day. And then I would remember, is this being productive? No, it is not, but you know what? Going down that YouTube rabbit hole at eight o'clock at night is okay because that's my relaxed time. So I would just remind myself of those little things and that helps you move your life forward. I was going to say career, but it moves whatever your goal is forward. So I wanted to share my word or words of the year this year, because I actually have been struggling with my word for this. And I could not decide between two of them. So I actually have two words of the year this year, and it is definitely going to benefit you because I've really been focused on the safety geek and the community

[00:23:00] this year, or thinking about my goal setting for the next year.

So my first word is committed, which means I'm committed. In what I'm doing, and that might be committed to my health journey because I do have a surgery coming up. I'm not dental. Believe it or not. I do have that too, but my health journey and things that I have to have in place for my. So I am committed for that.

I'm committed to my audience. I'm committed to my students. I'm committed to the community. That's how I want to feel this year is like, is everything I'm doing? Is it, am I, am I committed to what I'm doing? Because I love that expression of the chicken and the pig, where when you're talking about breakfast, the chicken is involved.

You know, they made the eggs, but the. The pig's committed. I love that so

[00:24:00] much. So I want to be the pig. I want to be all in when it comes to my health, my life, my family, and the safety week. So my other word of the year is consistent. And that comes back to you guys because I feel like my consistency in podcasting, in YouTube and blogging has been awful this year. And I think that if I could be more consistent, I would be able to serve you guys better. So that's why I just could not decide between the two. , I think consistent is where I'm at right now, but really being committed will build consistency. So that's the other thing about the word of the year, right?

Is like sometimes your word might be something that seems to make sense, but there's a deeper word that embodies it. So if I, if I use the word committed for me to be committed to my community means I have to be consistent in post. My podcast. That's why

[00:25:00] I am talking right now. 15 minutes before I'm supposed to be out the door.

I'm going to a workshop because I said, no, I'm going to be consistent in creating this podcast. And I have to get this recorded today, no matter what, no matter what is a commitment statement, cause I'm committed to it. So anyway, I know I'm rambling. But I just wanted to share, I thought that this was a good thing to share with you at the beginning of the year, and maybe it's not safety talk, but it is definitely something that will help you move your life forward.

Whether that life includes safety in it. I mean, hopefully it does, but a career in safety in it, or whether you use these words and go, no, I really want something different. That's okay. Too. Definitely goal setting. And the word of the year have been the two things that have really driven. My success

[00:26:00] over the last 10 or 15 years.

And if any, if anybody was to ask me, how did you get where you were? I would 100% say goal setting and not just goal setting for my work. It's goal-setting for my life. So check out the one thing by Gary Keller. Um, along with that, that book and atomic habits are probably the two books that I read every single year, because I get so much out of this.
And it really helps me move forward. Alrighty. My friend, make sure that you join the community@communitydotthesafetygeek.com because there are lots and lots of great things coming in the future. Or at least in 2022. Bye for now. You

[00:27:00] can check out the show notes and links for this week's episode@thesafetygeek.com. If you liked this pod. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast app. There are occasional bonus episodes that I don't always advertise. And you won't want to miss them one more favor, leave a review on that app too.

It helps others find the show. Thanks. I really appreciate it. And I can't wait to talk to you next week.