Goal Setting That Actually Works: The Pursuit, Progress & Process Framework

In this episode, we break goal setting down into a simple framework that transforms vague intentions into clear action. You'll learn how to connect the external results you want with the internal growth required to achieve them, making consistency feel less like willpower and more like momentum.

We discuss:

• Turning "I'm trying" into specific, measurable, time-bound goals.
• Breaking big dreams into manageable micro goals and daily actions.
• Creating the growth gap between who you are today and who you need to become.
• Why writing your goals down and displaying them dramatically increases follow-through.
• Using Pursuit Goals to connect achievement with identity-level transformation.
• Using Progress Goals to build momentum through measurable wins.
• Using Process Goals to create daily habits that produce lasting results.
• Speaking your goals out loud to strengthen accountability.
• Training your attention so better decisions become more automatic.

If you've ever struggled to stay consistent, lost motivation after the excitement wore off, or wondered why some people seem to achieve their goals while others stay stuck, this episode gives you a practical framework you can start using today.

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Transcript

Welcome And Today’s Focus

Heidi 0:00

Welcome back to the show.

Ryan 0:01

Let's go. I'm excited. What are we talking

From Vague Goals To Micro Steps

Ryan 0:04

about today?

Heidi 0:04

I want to talk about goal setting. Actually, I was working with a client on this earlier this morning.

Ryan 0:10

Awesome.

Heidi 0:11

Yeah. A college student who was uh she's trying to to submit applications for scholarships. And I said, So what's your goal? How many if you did it and were at the end of the time frame to to do the scholarship applications, how many would you have done? It was like, ooh. So many times with goals, we think I'm just trying to do whatever. And we don't create a specific um something measurable, something time bound. We've all heard about SMART goals.

Ryan 0:45

Um and so we we took that and we created that everybody's heard about smart goals. But we'll go back, we'll come back to some goals. We'll go back to it. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Heidi 0:53

Yeah. So we took it, we we created a larger goal, and then we looked at the time frame that she had to do it and what she had going on over that period of time and what was actually realistic for her. And we broke that into some micro goals, some baby steps to get there. And uh by the end of it, she was like, Yeah, absolutely, I know exactly what I need to do next. So there's a lot of power in that, in just not saying that you're trying to do something as if I could try to research and learn about eating vegetables, and I could be trying to learn more and do it, but until I put a piece of broccoli in my mouth, then I'm not actually doing it. So I need to figure out what am I doing and how much of it do I need to do to reach my goal. And I know that you have a framework that you've been it's been evolving over a handful

The Growth Gap And Writing It Down

Heidi 1:41

of years.

Ryan 1:41

I originally learned goal setting from Greg Omundsen. Remember, Greg? Yeah, uh they call him the fire breather. He's one of the original CrossFit guys back when CrossFit was just in the very first gym, and he used to travel the country, the world, actually go into all the CrossFit gyms and teaching goal setting. He was a coach of mine that I hired for I was a handful of years ago, maybe. I don't know, six or seven years ago. I hired for a full year. Uh we did a lot of biblical type of stuff, but he, you know, we talked about goal setting all the time. And um two things that I picked up from him, there's always two things, two things that I picked up from him that I thought were a wonderful way of kind of wrapping your mind around the power of goal setting. One was uh the first time we did a goal setting session, he challenged me because he was like, Well, haven't you already done that or couldn't don't you know you can do that or whatever? And so he had this framework of saying, let's set a goal that's gonna help you to become something that you're currently not. That there should be a gap between the version of you that can achieve that goal and who you currently are. That if you would have, if you would have, if you could have, you already would have. I'm like, interesting, right? Because that the growth is some of that motivating intrinsic factor behind it. So that's the first kind of principle of saying, like, let's acknowledge that we have to actually write down and plan out goal setting in a way that becomes actionable and measurable, and we can track it and there can be some accountability around it because most people, I mean, 5% of the world, only 5% of the world actually even writes down their goals.

Heidi 3:22

That just blows my mind every time I hear that. They that stout always comes out at New Year's.

Ryan 3:26

Yeah, I had I just started up with a client, a round two with a client. I w I worked with this uh athlete a year ago, and now they're back again for round two at this same type of year. And I asked them, so what are your current goals? And and I'm like, Have you written them down? They're like, Well, they're in my head. I'm like, Yeah, they're they're just ideas, they're just ideas until you write them down. So that that was the first piece was uh, you know, like this gap between. And then I just actually accidentally verbalized the second, which if you don't make it actionable, you don't put pen to paper, you don't write it down, and then post it like to where you have to revisit it in a way because the idea just it's fleeting. Like thoughts are fleeting. You have a great idea one day, and you have a goal, and I want to do X, Y, or Z, but you don't actually figure out how you're going to pursue that, what's the how to track the progress, what's the process of going into that, then it's just an idea. So uh to actualize that, you have to first understand that there's a gap between who you currently are and who you are gonna become when you execute the goal. And the second piece is that you know, we we gotta we gotta put it on paper, we gotta make it measurable, we we gotta take it from idea to action, uh, then it becomes lived. So the framework, um, you know, and in the sports psychology, there's different things that you've seen about, you know, performance goal and progress goal and and uh and all those type of things. Um, but I have really enjoyed language-wise, because if I am if I am setting a goal that's going to force me to grow and I'm gonna become a more adaptable, integrated, resilient version of myself on the other end, right? I'm

Pursuit Means External And Internal

Ryan 5:15

gonna build more confidence or whatever I'm looking for, I'm gonna have a new opportunity out of life, then I'm pursuing something. So the first aspect is pursuit, like to know not only what I'm pursuing in externally, that the world can see yes, you did do the thing or whatever that might be, but I'm also clear about the internal pursuit of who I'm exploring to become. And there, you know, if you listen to our last podcast about limiting beliefs and things like that, the intrinsic value for me is if I go pursue the goal, it's gonna potentially force me to let go of something internally that is not the truth, that is has some sort of a limiting belief or a story or a narrative that's that's limiting my potential. So that's what I'm actually pursuing.

Heidi 6:06

And we even talked about that if if you haven't listened to the last episode about limiting beliefs. Uh, it's the hidden reason why you're procrastinating. So I love that, just recognizing calling that forward and saying by doing this, I'm gonna be letting go of unlimiting belief.

Ryan 6:22

Yep. So that's the real so there's in the pursuit, there's an extrinsic, you know, like objective goal, but there's the subjective internal motivator of your growth healing, whatever the word you want to call it.

Heidi 6:38

So in the scholarship application, that's the external goal. I want to get the scholarship, but then there's something within that that I'm worthy of getting the scholarship.

Ryan 6:48

Yeah, amen.

Heidi 6:48

Yeah.

Ryan 6:49

And and uh a little bit of neuroscience. I uh it's super interesting to me how we are built as humans that the extrinsic and the intrinsic motivating aspects of the brain when we think about goal setting and kind of who we become in the process and all that pursuit aspect I'm talking about, those two parts of the brain don't cross paths, they don't interact with each other. So that becomes a very human uh willpower, intentional aspect of like going, we have to then go, this is what I want. This is who I'm gonna become if I pursue that goal. And then the final little nuance, I mean, and I don't want to go too far down a rabbit hole here, but the final nuance is the goal is just a vehicle for me to be put in a situation, in a container, a worthy challenge of sorts, for me to grow. So even if I fall short of the pursuit of the external goal, the outcome, the objective, I still had to go through the progress and the process in that pursuit of reaching such goal. So I probably still grew in the way that I intended. So when I connect in my brain the extrinsic and the intrinsic motivator, the the objective, the goal, and how I'm gonna grow, then you be somewhere along the lines, you realize, like, oh, the real value here, the real gold was the fact that I I grew, I evolved, I have a larger capacity now, I have a new level of awareness, I have a new perspective, I have a new uh image of myself, or I have let go of of egoic constructs that have held me back or past stories that are no longer relative.

Heidi 8:35

So you're almost like you're you're looking at the end result that of how you're feeling and what you've had to overcome to get there in a way where you're actually calling that forth to the beginning of the goal setting process and orienting it there, where most people don't, if you're not consciously doing that process, you're only going to know all of that at the end.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Yeah.

Heidi 9:00

You go, oh yeah, this is really cool because this is who I became in the process, and these are the skills I developed and what I had to let go of and how I became this greater version of myself. But you're saying you're putting it together at the beginning because our brain doesn't naturally do that.

Ryan 9:15

Yeah, maybe we could do another episode to unpack what you just said because I could become a little bit confusing in this conversation. I think of just all the practices that we use to try to actualize that version of you that has already reached the goal. And that's in now and later circuitry and all the things with the other, you know.

Heidi 9:34

But so you said you have the pursuit.

Ryan 9:35

Pursuit, yep. So we know we're pursuing the external vehicle and the internal growth. Then we need to know what is, how are we going to measure growth? Because most goals that are worthy of writing down can cause it either some overwhelm or lack of motivation because another one of my athletes, different one that I was just speaking about, was struggling with motivation because their season is so far off. And then so they they like, you know, like how much really am I working towards my goal, you know, when my season is still two and a half months away?

Progress Goals And Dopamine Momentum

Heidi 10:12

Right.

Ryan 10:13

I said, Well, the moment that we then were clear about what is the pursuit, in his case, this is a high school football player who said, I want to be all state. Awesome. Well, what are some things that are gonna help you to progress that we can measure? That now back to that smart goal. It's specific, it's measurable, it's achievable, it's realistic, it's time bound. And even when I add an S to the beginning, it's small. So therefore we can reach it in the next, let's say, two weeks. I like goals that about two-week time frame, month at the max, that I'm gonna be able to get to this point in the next two weeks or a month. I can see it, it's right out there, right? It's very tangible. It's in the next eight, 10, 12, 15 days, whatever that might look like, right? And that's gonna help to make sure that we are releasing dopamine. And dopamine is a motivational chemical to keep going towards the goal, and there's these stepping stones. So micro goals uh or or progress goals is what we call them. You know, that's those two things are interconnected, in my opinion. They're just stair steps that help you to reach the barrier goal. And if you do a really good job at noticing what the progress is, and you notice that growth, and it creates a momentum in that direction, and you find yourself kind of being like, Oh, I I reached the goal. And I it's almost like I forgot that I was even in pursuit of that because I grew so far past it. Yeah. So progress goals. Clean on that. Yep. Yeah, any questions? So pursuit, yeah,

Process Goals And Daily Follow Through

Ryan 11:45

pursuit, progress, progress, and then process because there's things that you gotta do daily, right? So this could be attitude stuff, like how you're showing up as a teammate or a leader, being vocal, you know, um, you know, as a mental coach, my athletes, I I encourage them to do certain mental skills work every day, whether it be box breathing or attention control or awareness type exercises or journaling prompts or whatever that might be. And so, like, are you doing those things? Because yes, it's measurable you did or you didn't do it, but it's not really, you don't really feel the progress in it. So that's therefore it's process. So it's the daily journaling, it's the it's maybe it's a sleep hygiene or nutrition, it's uh maybe it's learning something new, studying something. All those are just process. They're the things that you just you're doing daily. Yeah, you know, you're doing daily, you're going out and getting in nature, um, all those types of components. So to make a list, what I what I recommend personally, in my own professional opinion, and what I've experienced as somebody who is intentionally constantly setting goals, um, is three micro goals, three process goals. And then you post them. And then the one of the nuances for posting them is we're just interesting as human beings. We forget. We just tend to forget. Like we just I write down goals that I think are so meaningful to my right. And I if I put them on my computer on a document, on a Google Drive or whatever, uh I have to go back and look. And a few weeks later, I go, What was that call again?

Heidi 13:23

We naturally forget because our brain wants to just conserve energy.

Ryan 13:27

Conserve energy.

Heidi 13:28

So yeah, doing new things takes a lot of energy.

Ryan 13:30

Being in the unknown takes energy, growth takes energy. So you post it somewhere where it's front of mind, it becomes part of your daily ritual, becomes part of your daily routine, part of your process goal is to revisit your goal and to track and see where am I? What am I attacking today? How can I move the needle today? And if you struggle with motivation there, then then it's time to talk about like your why and and and go to a deeper and if you're not motivated, you just don't have a deep a deep enough intrinsic burn to do the thing because anything that is deeply felt, you will take action upon.

Heidi 14:04

It's that just means we just got to get more emotionally involved with the yeah, create a better connection to it and even looking beyond whatever the current action is to like later down the road, what's the impact of that?

Ryan 14:18

So I I just love that it's it's easy to remember pursuit, progress, process. It's it can get a little bit confusing for some people in the sense of like, oh, is that a progress or a process goal? And if it's something that you really aren't gonna measure that's not a couple weeks out, then you can just put it in the process. Like it, and though sometimes there's a little bit of like, oh, it's is it one or the other? It can be very closely related. When they're closely related, you know you're on it. Yeah. Right. When like you feel like the process feeds into the progress, and the progress is part of your process, right? Then you know that you're in this very momentous type of of field of awareness.

Heidi 14:57

Yeah, I love that. And for the reminders, a little hack would be to put them as your screensaver on your phone. Because how many times a day, like are you, you know, picking it up, whatever, and seeing that if that if there were words there or even some images, like a little vision board of set of sorts with your um some things related to your goal. That could be really powerful too. I've had a lot of clients like post them up, post-it notes, put them on their mirror, that type of thing.

Ryan 15:27

Yeah, mirror by your door of your office is where I like mine right here, where when I'm sitting, I can see it. It's right there. You know, this is micro goals and checklists, I can see it. It's right there next to my TV screen or my TV screen, my computer screen. And then, you know, uh man, it's helpful to tell people.

Heidi 15:46

Yeah. What is the stat if you tell someone about your goal?

Ryan 15:50

Accountability and just speaking life into it.

Heidi 15:54

What's the stat? How how much more likely are you?

Ryan 15:57

I knew that stat at some point. You'd be I have no idea. I I'd have to look it up.

Heidi 16:03

That's really interesting. I know it goes up exponentially. Yeah, it's huge. Uh when you have that accountability, so many times it's just power in, you know, with our clients, like having them checking in, letting us know, like how I mean those type of numbers are are cool to try to find.

Ryan 16:20

I don't know who actually is making those types of where is it coming from? Where is it coming from? I think it's just ideas, but I would say that half of the value, at least, if not more, is the power of your spoken word, speaking things into existence. A lot of times you'll even you caught me in one of these just the other day where I was speaking something,

Speak It Out And Build Accountability

Ryan 16:40

and you're like, that's not gonna happen this year. I said, I'm that's not, I'm not, I know. I'm talking about as if it's already 2027. Yeah. And I'm speaking a goal that I have for 2027 because I know that the goal that we had for 2026, we're already gonna hit. So I'm already living in the words I'm speaking out loud about a certain in this case, it was a a a business goal, and you kind of looked at me cross-eyed and I'm like, that's 2027.

Heidi 17:11

Yeah, because I know where the numbers are tracking, like currently. So I'm like, huh. Yeah, that's way that's even more than what I'm projecting.

Ryan 17:19

That's 25% more. Uh yeah.

Heidi 17:22

But I love that. So it's it is there's a lot of power in speaking it out and affirming it. And I think there's also some social uh accountability too. You know, nobody wants to tell somebody a goal that they're working towards and then have that person come back around and say, like, how's that how's that going? Yeah, like uh, I quit.

Attention Probability Beats Willpower

Ryan 17:40

You know, the the I can't I can't have this conversation without talking about one of my favorite aspects of neuroscience that I learned from Stephanie Fay was all of this work of setting the goals, of posting it, of revisiting it, of thinking about them, the why, the all that component, like visualizing the version of yourself that becomes it, journaling about that process and the impact and the experience of that. And maybe we could go down, uh do a podcast about that. But it's all to create what's called, and this is what fascinates me. This is why when I love the science, when I hate when I learn the science behind the stuff, it's like, oh no, I get it, but like no, you're like, oh no, no, no, no, no. Like I get it, it's a whole different ball game. It creates what's called attention probability. Okay, so what's attention probability? That means there's a higher probability that when if I do this all this internal work, you know, more probably than just writing down my goals, but I visualize and I do all the things that we've talked about or that that we teach, it's going to create a higher probability of me unconsciously choosing the action that leads towards that goal. This is something that I, you know, like want people to understand that it's and I even had this idea as a podcast idea at some point. I was gonna ask you if you want to record this idea. We don't need more discipline, we just need to be willing to train our mind, to train our mind to live a future present reality of knowing what we're where we're going, who we're becoming, the experience we're having, the impact that's making, whether it is to your client wanting to get in, what was it, school, master's? Getting scholarships, scholarships for her, for her, was it for a master's, or what is it for?

Heidi 19:28

Um nursing. Nursing.

Ryan 19:30

So uh, you know, like the cool thing about that, I always relate it back to my book. When I was writing my book, I was learning this a science about about like a goal orientation, I call it, and goal achievement was I realized if I do enough of that like end result outcome, this is who I've become, this is what I've let go of. This is the confidence that me reaching that goal of writing the book has created. This is what that book feels like in my hand, this is the impact that book is making, this is what people are saying to me, this is the social proof, this is the social impact of achieving that goal. All of that is more like intrinsic stuff, right? Which creates this energetic pull, this energetic pull that actually primes your attention to in a moment, and this is how it shows up relatively, in a moment, let's say on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of the winter at two o'clock in the afternoon, and the weather's crappy outside and there's nothing going on, you know, you might or in the fall, let's say, you know, right, and it's like, oh, there's a college football game on, right? Which that'd be fun to watch. But or I could sit down with my journal and and I could write a few notes and I could, you know, work on some mental models or things that I want to put in my book. And if you do the internal work consistently over a long over a period of time with some earnestness and really get emotionally involved with it, what will happen is you will be more probable to choose the action uh that will lead to that goal, which means you will sit down and journal instead of turning on the TV. And you won't have to have the willpower to make that choice. You won't have to motivate yourself to make that choice, you won't have to fight with yourself. You will actually unconsciously want to go into your office or wherever the place is.

Heidi 21:29

Yeah, or if you're exercising or something like that, it's like, okay, well, hey, maybe I'll go work out.

Ryan 21:34

Or whatever the goal is. I use the book as the idea, but like whatever the goal is. If you know that piece well enough and you've involved yourself with it, you know, emotionally and on repetition over time, you're training your mind to do to just go be cut just to go do it. It just it's just gonna happen. And like that to me is this idea of like. Effortless ease that is so much fun to think about. So do I need to be disciplined and grind and right? Well, there's some aspect to that, maybe, but the more that I explore the power of this type of conversation of learning how to like really truly goal set, really truly understand what we're pursuing, understand how we're to progress towards it. So then the dopamine gets released and the mind starts to create the images and and I start to get in touch with the version of myself I'm becoming because of the pursuit of this goal. And and I stick with the process aspect of it, the daily actions that help me to to stay in momentum towards it, that then it doesn't take discipline. It just it becomes who you are and you just you achieve the goal and when you're like, huh. Right? And it's it's uh it's has a level of ease to it. I just so that's my like little tail end story and science a little bit to like motivate people to go like it's it's not about discipline, like writing down your goals is about you creating something in your mind, and creating that probability that when you see that the weather isn't great.

Heidi 23:09

It's funny that you said that because this actually came up in the conversation earlier today about the goal setting. Okay, the weather hasn't been great. Perfect, perfect time to sit down and do these applications, perfect time to sit down and work on the book, whatever it is. You start to see whatever you're having as your abundance. Yeah, because you can see, like, yeah, no matter what's going on, I'm I'm making progress, I'm I'm working towards these things.

Ryan 23:33

Yeah, and another really relative example of attention probability to towards a goal to me was was you know, whenever I have a little bit stronger of an idea of a fitness goal or right, those type of things. Like I I go into the fridge and and and we have pretty healthy food, but like if I have a choice of this food or that food, I s tend to lean towards the carrots and the broccoli and some hummus rather than whatever whatever the other option would be. And uh and again, that's not a willpower thing. You're creating your own internal will to like just make the choice that's more in alignment with what you're pursuing.

Heidi 24:19

It's very much um, and and we'll have to get into this on another episode. It's it's actually when we can set a goal to change our self-concept, then the way that we're seeing your, you know, you're seeing yourself as someone who makes healthy choices. And so that paradigm shift uh creates an attention probability towards you making those choices and becoming that version of yourself.

Ryan 24:41

It's so beautiful. Yeah. I love it. I love the human experience, how we get to explore that and create that. We have to choose it. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah.

Heidi 24:48

So

Self Concept Shifts And Listener Invite

Heidi 24:49

we'd love to um I just want to say I we'd love to hear from you. There's a a link in the show notes that you can send us a text message. If you have a goal that you're working toward towards and you would like to tell us about it, we would love to hear that.

Ryan 25:02

Or you want to be coached on the three P Soot. We would love for somebody to come on, like tell us what your goal is, and we'll coach you.

Heidi 25:09

That's actually an idea that we had um the other day. We were talking about that. Wouldn't it be fun to coach somebody like that?

Ryan 25:14

Somebody raised their hand. We got I got to get back to them. I'm gonna see them tomorrow. I'll talk to them.

Heidi 25:18

Yeah. And if you have just a general question that you want to have us address an anonymously here on the podcast, leave us your topic and your question, and we'd be happy to do an episode on it. So thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time.

Ryan 25:32

Yeah, thank you for your time.