2022 is here! Brittany and Emma talk about their new year goals and give you some ideas for goal setting for the year ahead.

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Here’s a transcript of our conversation:

Brittany: Hi, Emma.

Emma: Hi, Brittany.

Brittany: So today I wanna have a little fun where we don’t kind of have a structure, but it’s the new year. We’re a couple, about a month and a half into the new year by the time you guys listened to this. And I wanna talk about goals. You know, Connor and I did this last year and I thought it was a lot of fun. Where we got to just kind of talk about what we were looking forward to in 2022. So I thought we could make, or 2021 at the time I thought we could make this a little tradition. So let me start with something and we’ll just kind of dive in here and go back and forth. I and we just talked about, you know, using time wisely in our last episode. I’m not great at that. And so that’s gonna be a really important goal for me this year, is learning how to manage my time better, specifically at work, because my mind goes everywhere and as a writer, they say the hardest part of being a writer is writing is getting started on a task is so hard that I, don’t know. It’s a difficult thing, but you feel so good when you do manage your time wisely and you don’t feel like you’re constantly living in dread or anxious and, totally. Yeah. That’s my first goal.

Emma: Yeah, I love that. My first one that I will say is kind of a strange one, and if you’re unfamiliar you might be like, what the heck is this? But I train in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I started this last year and it’s been super challenging and fun. if you’re familiar with martial arts at all, it’s a very interesting discipline where you get really put out of your comfort zone and trying, it was actually a goal of mine last year and I tried it. I ended up really liking it, having a good time. So now I’ve been training for about six months and my coach has been encouraging me to do a competition, which is where basically it’s like a big tournament and you sign up and it’s hand-to-hand combat. So you’re, it’s almost similar to wrestling, but it’s a little bit different. It’s a little more like defense-heavy I guess. But I want to do a jujitsu competition and I’m terrified of doing one. I actually signed up for one a few months ago and then ended up canceling because I got really busy and couldn’t train enough and I wasn’t feeling good about it. Which may be an excuse, maybe not, maybe I was just really scared. but I wanna do one this year and I’m going to spend more time in the gym training and practicing and getting ready. But I think having something tangible to point to, a tangible goal like that, like some people who run, they’ll sign up for races, they’ll sign up for something.

Brittany: I see, I run, but I never do like, goal-setting for it. Yeah. You shame me with another goal.

Emma: It’s an awesome way to make sure that you’re like really sticking to it with your exercise too. Having something competitive coming up. I mean, oh my gosh, if I go in and I don’t practice and I don’t train enough, I’m gonna get totally beat in front of a bunch of people. So it’s a good little, reason to get in and actually do things. But I think having some sort of thing to point to too, where you said, Hey, I went out of my comfort zone. I tried something totally new, and whether or not I win anything, I think it’ll be really cool to point to that. So that’s a big goal of mine.

Brittany: No, I, think that’s great cuz again, I always, I like to work out and I run, but I don’t set these goals. So you just gave me a completely new idea. So one that I really wanna talk about is honing in on my talents. It’s not just about, you know, making money and being productive. I really wanna be a comedian and I’m not getting any younger. So one thing that I’ve set for myself is I said, all right, you have four years to really start working on this. And then you know, I’m not saying I’m gonna give up on it, but I have four years to really make it my life and see if I can make it, not even just a hobby, but a career. It’s something that’s really important to me. So one of my goals this year is to go up and do standup locally once a week. I’ve also started making funny TikTok videos and they’ve been, in fact, my last one got half a million views. Wow. So yeah. Awesome. Yeah, so really excited about that. So to do a video twice a week too. So I’m really honing in on these things that will help me. Cause it’s, again, it’s not just about your academic or you’re, you know, professional pursuits. You wanna have, you wanna have a hobby. I encourage everybody to get a hobby if you don’t have a hobby, make that one of your goals this year because hobbies are what absolutely keep you going when everything else seems crazy in life.

Emma: Yeah. You’re so right. And that’s what ju-jitsu is for me, even. It’s just a hobby. It’s like a hobby, but also a fun way of getting exercise. And I don’t know, it’s, it’s fun. another one that is kind of in that vein is I want to read two books a month. I think that’s.

Brittany: Ooh. like that.

Emma: That’s very reasonable. A lot of people read a lot more and when I was kind of thinking through this, when we were planning out this episode, I was like, well, I wanna say one a week. But I just, I think setting goals that are reasonable is a really good way to go. Because then you’re not gonna be like, oh no, I got way behind now I’m totally off and just, I’m gonna end up just totally canceling this goal and forgetting I ever made it. And I do like we just talked about our routines. I do read every evening before bed, so I think if I just carve out a little more time for that, two books a month, totally, totally doable. And then maybe next year in 2023, I will do one a week. But we’ll see about that. So that’s, that’s another big one for me.

Brittany: One a week. Yeah. That’s gonna be a lot.

Emma: It is. Oh yeah. My husband did that like, two years ago he did one a week through the whole thing and I was blown away. So I’m like, all right if you can do it, I can do it.

Brittany: I love that. Good for him. I read one on the plane the other day and I was so proud of myself cause I was like, okay, it was a quick one and I like to speed up.

Emma: Yeah, oh, me too. Yeah.

Brittany: Yeah. So, that was really good. so one thing I, also wanna talk about, and I’ll probably mention one for 2022 as well, but some goals that I achieved this year too, because I think it’s important to nice say, you know, good job. I was really bad and I’ve talked about this before about controlling my emotions and I’ve gotten better if, in my twenties, I was a hot mess. But that’s something I got so good at this year that I’ve kind of taken a look at myself and been like, I don’t even recognize who you are anymore. In a good way. So, you know, I, always meditate. I’ve been meditating for four years, I do things, but this year I’ve really been able to stop and we talk about the importance of controlling your emotions all the time on this show. Yeah. But I was really able to stop and say, okay, you know, let’s talk about what you’re feeling right now before it gets to be something too big. Yeah. So one thing I achieved this year is learning how to control my emotions. And when I think about what I wanna do for the next year, I wanna get even better at that. So that’s a goal I achieved. And when I wanna do.

Emma: That’s awesome. I really like that goal. It’s, I like things too where it’s more of like a holistic thing. It’s like a lifestyle sort of even like a mindset change. I think that’s really good. And you can even work your habit goals into a sort of the mindset change. Like I want to have a mindset. For me, I always dread working out even though I feel so good after I go. I love lifting weights. Like I said, I trained jiu jitsu, but I start to find excuses not to go right before it’s time. I’ll be like, oh, I’m really busy with work. I really need to get this thing done. When in reality, you know, I should have just planned better. And I find ways to make time for the things that I want to do. So I need to find ways to make time for the things that I know are good for me. So that’s a big one for me is changing my mindset on exercise rather than, oh, I need to go work out cuz it’s good for me. It’s gonna keep me healthy. Rather than that saying, wow, I can’t believe that I have a body that’s capable of exercise. I am so lucky that I can go to the gym and do hard things and pick up heavy stuff and, you know, improve my physical fitness. That’s such a gift. That’s such a blessing. So I think sort of changing the way that I view that is a goal for me. but also, oh gosh, another one I think is really like being disciplined about what I’m eating. Because as we know, we’ve, you know, COVID has really brought a lot of this up. Diet and exercise is so important for people’s health and it’s super easy for me to eat really, really healthy. You know, Monday through Friday I’m pretty good about it, but then on the weekend, it’s really hard for me to like say no sometimes to certain unhealthy foods that I know are gonna make me feel bad. So I think, you know, obviously there’s a balance. You need to be able to let yourself, you know, live every now and then and have a cookie, have a piece of cake, whatever. But I think being able to, you know, show the same discipline that I show through the week on the weekend is another goal of mine.

Brittany: I really like that. And it’s especially the workout one cuz I always dread it. Yeah. And I, have friends that keep me accountable, but I always had this feeling of like, oh no, I have to work out. Not, oh my goodness, I am healthy enough to go work a workout. Yeah. And when I got COVID, my lungs hurt a little bit and it was, I had that moment of like, oh, I can’t work out. Like how great is it when you’re well enough to actually work out? Absolutely. Like, what a blessing that is. So that’s a really good one. I’m trying to think of more. I have so many that I haven’t really like sat down and this is another thing I recommend you guys doing is sit down and actually write them out. That’s one of my favorite things to do on New Year’s Day when you know the parties are over and you’re probably a little tired from if your parents let you stay up till midnight. But, so, no I have so many, I’d like to journal more. I don’t journal enough. I write in a journal that’s called The Five Minute Journal I’ve talked about before. Oh yeah, yeah. Really love that. But I don’t journal like, my day or, or my feelings. And so that’s something I really wanna get better at this year. When I was a kid, I grew up in a family that put a lot of emphasis on keeping a journal and I have detailed journals, but I don’t have those anymore. So yeah, that’s gonna be one of my goals as well.

Emma: Totally. Yeah. And then I’ll do one more before we wrap it up here. So this last year, I’m a Christian, so I read, you know, I try to read a devotional from the Bible every day. And, my husband and I were like, we’re gonna wake up in the morning, we’re gonna read our, there’s like a one year bible that if you read it every day you’ll end up reading the whole thing in a year. And we came close this year, but there were a few weeks where we just got busy and kind of like didn’t quite make it happen. So this year I want it to be even more a part of our everyday life where it’s, we don’t miss and if you miss one day, you make it up the next day kind of thing. So, even improving on that and you know, I will pat myself on the back that we got most of it done in 2021, but in 2022 I wanna improve on that even more because I think self-improvement is awesome. So that is where we’ll wrap it up today guys. Let us know what some of your habits are or if you got any ideas from the show, from listening today, we would love to hear about that and hear from you guys. but yeah, we’ll wrap it up there. And best of luck with everything in 2022. Brittany, you can keep me accountable and I will help with you as well, And we will talk to you guys all again soon.

Brittany: Talk to you soon.