Ep 139: Goals With Soul (Part 2): Turning Clarity Into Actionable Goals

In Part 2 of Goals With Soul, we take everything from the foundation episode — your values, identity, priorities, and desired feelings — and turn it into clear, actionable goals you can actually follow through on.

This episode is all about the how: breaking goals down so they feel doable, flexible, and aligned — without losing the soul behind them.

In this episode:

• The key difference between outcome goals and behavior goals
• Why you can’t control outcomes — but you can control your actions
• How to break goals into skills, actions, and supportive practices
• Using SMART goals without making them rigid or joyless
• How to track progress without pressure or punishment
• Ways to measure feeling-based goals like energy, confidence, or presence
• Why celebrating wins and bright spots is essential for momentum
• How to create goals that support body, mind, and spirit

=== Resources mentioned:===

• Companion Goals With Soul Worksheet 
• Wellness Wake Up: $99 Intro Coaching Session
  A one-hour session to clarify aligned, actionable goals across body, mind, and spirit.

Transcript

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Introduction and Recap

0:51

Welcome, welcome, welcome back to Real, brave and Unstoppable for episode number 139. I'm Kortney, your host, and if you joined me Last time we talked all about the foundation for meaningful goals, which are values, identity, priorities, and your core desired feelings. So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, you might wanna go back and check it out. Number 138, just the one right before this one.

Turning Clarity into Action

1:20

But today we're gonna take that clarity that we talked about last time and we're gonna turn it into action. So we're gonna make your goals not just soulful, but doable without losing the meaning that you discovered in part one. So this is where most people get stuck. They know what they want, but they don't know how to get it. So today we're gonna fix that. I'm gonna give you some useful tools that you can use in your life. So the first thing I wanna cover, and this is super important, so listen

Outcome Goals vs. Behavior Goals

1:52

up. We're gonna talk about the distinction that will change everything, outcome goals versus behavior goals. So outcome goals are the "what". This is what you wanna achieve. Like, you know, I want to feel strong and energized, or I want to run a marathon, or I want to lose 20 pounds. Behavior goals are the how, what you actually do. So the example for feeling strong and energized could be I'll strength train three times a week. I'll go for a walk daily. I'll sleep seven to eight hours a night. Losing 20 pounds could mean I'll track my food intake, I will drink the appropriate amount of water, whatever that number is. X, y, Z ounces of water every day. You know, it might be, I will, similar to the other example, I will exercise three times a week doing strength training one day at the gym. I'll do cardio one day, I'll do yoga one day, whatever it is. Like you're, you're, this is the how, these are the things that you do to reach that outcome. So I mentioned another example being I wanna lose 20 pounds. So here's the thing is like we can't necessarily control whether that outcome actually happens. There could be things along the way that prevent me from actually completing it. Like say for example, the goal of wanting to do a marathon. There are things that might prevent me from actually doing the marathon, even though I worked towards doing it. So it could be like, it could be like an injury or getting sick, or the marathon I planned, got canceled. What I can control are the actions that I take to set me up to complete it. So with the marathon example, I'll follow my six month training plan, making sure to schedule in my training runs for the week on Sunday evening after dinner or I'll train with X, Y, z running group for my Sunday long runs. Those are the things that you can plan to do to set yourself up to reach the outcome. Outcome goals just point us in the right direction. Behavior goals, help us walk the path. So the magic happens when your behavior goals are aligned with the outcomes you want and the feelings that you're chasing from the last episode.

Breaking Down Goals into Skills, Actions, and Practices

4:13

Once we have behavior based goals, let's talk about breaking that down into skills and actions and practices. So once you know your behaviors, we have three different layers. Skills are what you need to do to get better. No skills are. The way to think about skills is what do you need to get better at to consistently do the behavior? An example is for like strength training, if that's the skill or if that's the behavior. The skill could be learning proper form, learning how to. Do a progressive overload program, learning how to structure workouts, so the actions. These are the specific steps that help you build the skill. So examples there could be, I follow a plan, I log the weights that I lift, I track the rep site, I do, and then finally we have that third layer of practices. So the practices are the rituals and the systems that support our actions. So that could be, I'm gonna pack my gym bag the night before. I'm gonna schedule workouts in my calendar. I'm gonna set reminders. So when you break it down this way, what once felt overwhelming, suddenly becomes really actionable and doable. So you see exactly what to do next. You have plans for obstacles. It's a lot easier. It makes a lot more sense. So let's use another example here. This one's a little bit less concrete. So let's say my outcome based goal is I wanna have more energy. That's really broad, right? I mean, more energy. Who doesn't want that? The behavior based goals. We have to do a little research here. We have to think about like what things might I do to give me more energy. That could be, you know, eating health healthy. It could be drinking more water or going to bed on time. It could be spending time resting, giving myself time for self care. It could be working on my mindset about. Time or, you know, I'm taking on too much. So, you know, let's just say we pick the behavior based goal of let's just say that we pick the behavior based goal of taking time out. To rest and recover or, you know, self-care time. That's the behavior-based goal. I'm going to, I'm gonna carve out time. The behavior is I'm gonna make time for self-care skills. What do I need to do to better to get, what do I need to learn or get better at to consistently do that? You know, maybe it's. The skill of maybe, I feel like self-care is selfish. Maybe I need the skill of reframing my mindset to to, to a place where I realize that I need to take care of myself in order to show up for the other people in my life in a way that feels good to me. That matters. So that would be the skill, that mindset, having the mindset that self-care is not selfish. It's necessary. The actions that could be. Now this is getting a little bit more like I don't expect you guys to come up with a goal like this on your own. 'cause this is more coming from a coaching mind. But like the actions, and this is something I help people with all the time, is the actions to get to that place where we can have that mind. Set is one thing could be, I'm gonna keep a record of my thoughts when I, you know, about, or I'm gonna write down all my thoughts about self-care and I'm gonna, I'm gonna work on reframing those. That's, that's the action I'm gonna work on reframing those. Okay. So what are the practices? You know, maybe it's, maybe it's every day. I'm gonna reflect on this a little bit and I'm gonna actively take this thought and look at different perspective. I'm gonna write down like three different perspectives, for example. So that's kind of how this can work on a little bit more of a nebulous or a little less of a concrete thing. I hope that makes sense. Always feels free to reach out with questions too. So let's talk now about once we have this broken down into these things we can do to reach the goal.

SMART Goals with Soul

8:50

I. Let's talk about making these goals, smart goals without killing the soul. Smart, smart goals in my world and the type of coaching that I do sometimes get kind of a bad rap because they can often feel really rigid or kind of joyless. But there it's really just a framework that we can use. Loosely or to the letter, but we can, we can use the framework to help us kind of make sure these goals are actionable and doable. But let's go over what smart means first. So smart's an acronym. The, the S is specific. So it means that our goal is clear, it's focused yeah, mostly clear. Don't say that. So the fir the S is specific. So the goal is clear, it's focused, it makes sense. We know exactly what it is. It's not like vague, like have more energy. That's a, that's a that's the outcome goal. Like that's pretty vague. Like, what does that mean? We want it to be clear. So when we say, okay, these are the things that you know, I'm gonna do. To make that happen. Like those are much more clear and focused. The m is measurable. This is something you can track. This can get tricky and we're gonna talk a little bit in a minute about like internal versus external cues of how to measure goals. We'll talk about that in a minute, but but measurable, there's, we gotta have some way to track it. Achi, the A is achievable. So this is, it's realistic for where you are right now. The R is relevant. Is this aligned for you? Is it does, is it aligned with your values and your priorities? And then the T is time bound. So this just gives you a sense of like, what's my rhythm here? Like what am I aiming for? I think this one is one that can be tricky 'cause sometimes it's hard to know, like. You know, how do I put a time on it? That makes sense. But we wanna have something like that. Otherwise it's the same thing. We get to the end of the year and we're like, oh, well I didn't reach that goal. But you can absolutely use smart goals while keeping the soul in them. For example, instead of exercise more, we can try. I will do strength training three times a week for 30 minutes in January to feel strong and capable. So notice how the feeling is still in there. Like that's the key. We wanna make sure we're connecting all of this back to why we care. So one thing that as I'm talking here, I'm noticing like there are a lot of different pieces of this, right? And they all work together. So like the smart framework is just one piece of this, that it's like one piece of the puzzle that help us create goals that we'll take action on. So these are like, I wouldn't just say, okay, let me just create a smart goal. I would start. Like I've outlined in both of these podcast episodes it's a lot more fun too. So let's then talk about tracking and accountability.

Tracking and Accountability

11:55

So tracking is one of the things I feel like is lacking in goal attainment, but tracking has a lot of aspects to it. It can be the actual tracking of the behaviors. So like habit trackers are great for these things or even just journaling or whatever, or, or things like that. But also analyzing like what went well and always we have to make ourselves look for those things 'cause that's not what our brain tends to automatically look for. So what went well? Okay, then what didn't go so well? We troubleshoot that, but we also have to really celebrate the bright spots in all of this. And really we're so we can build on them. Like we have to be able to see the growth that we are making. I just had a situation the other day where I was being a little hard on myself for it, and then I kind of had a moment later where I was like, you know, I'm really handling this a lot differently than I would've like a year ago, two years ago. And so I was like, I've become a person who can handle this a little better. I still have these feelings that are uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean I'm not handling it well. So we have to really look at those things that we are doing well, and that we, in ways that we have grown, it's super important. Also, tracking does not have to feel like punishment, right? It's not like we're gonna get in trouble for not, you know. Checking off a box one day. It's feedback. It shows if your behaviors are actually supporting your outcomes and desired feelings. There's a thing in coaching that, especially in like health coaching that we talk about, there's no, there's never failure. Only feedback. And when I say health coaching, like I kind of have a blend of health and wellness coaching and life coaching. Like I kind of cover all of it, so that's why I said that. And health coaching, that tends to be something that comes up a lot is we don't see these things as failure. We see that as feedback. Always just think about it as feedback. So some ways to track progress. First of all, we can track numbers, reps, miles, hours of sleep, ounces of water. We can track frequency. How many days do we show up? We can check consistency, like how, well, which is sort of like frequency. But now we're looking at of all the times that I wanna do this thing, like how often, what percentage of the time. Am I doing it? And I really like just a side note, but I really like to shoot for like 80% consistency before we add something else. Or, you know, up the challenge. We can use checklists, simple boxes to tick off. I have a planner that has like a habit section for the week. And every, there's like a little tiny box for every day. It's nice to see those check boxes. Sometimes we can use reflection prompts like, did I show up as the person I said I wanted to be today? We can always go back and revisit that stuff to kind of see where, where we are or how far we've come. We can do intuitive check-ins. How do I feel? Do I feel how I wanna feel? If not. What's misaligned? Accountability. So we talked about feedback, but accountability now can be internal or it can be external. Wait, no. Go back to tracking. So one thing about tracking is that. You know, we're, when we think about tracking, we're thinking about measuring, right? So one thing I think that can be tricky here is let's say, you know, my outcome-based goal is to. You know, like I used the example of I wanna have more energy. Well we've already talked about breaking that down into behavior-based goals, but we also can still track that outcome-based goal. Right. But we probably are gonna use, need to use more internal measurement than a. External measurement, which is what I, what I mean by that is that we're gonna have to sort of sense into what our progress is versus with behavior based goals, we're more usually more able to measure those things. But one way I like to do that is scale scaling. So if I ask myself on a scale of one to 10 right now, how much energy do I notice that I have? Throughout the day, what is that like? And if I say, oh gosh, like if one is none and 10 is all the energy, if I notice, you know what, I'm at a four, a lot of days average, then I can keep asking myself that question. Well, I was at a four, like, what do I think I'm at now? You can do this with all kinds of things. You know, maybe it's confidence too. Like you can, you can do it with that you know. So you can kind of have fun with the scaling, especially on those more outcome based goals that are more of a feeling anyway. So let's talk about accountability. This is just a quick little blurb here, but that can be an internal thing or an external thing. Meaning like, yeah, we can check in with ourselves. How are we feeling? External can be a journal, a friend, a coach, a small group. The point is to have these gentle reminders that keep our goals alive and, and well, and, okay, so let's talk about subjective goals and feeling based goals. So I talked a little bit about that with the scales. Not all goals can be measured in numbers, and that's okay. Some of the most important goals are about how we feel or how we show up, you know, confident, present, connected. So here's how to make subjective goals trackable. The first thing we do is with the feeling that we want. We pick behaviors that reflect the feeling. So if I am feeling confident, what am I doing? Okay, let's say I am worrying. When I notice I'm worrying about what other people think, I tell myself I don't know what they're thinking. I can't control what they think. And then we can use, like I mentioned before, we can use self ratings on a scale of one to 10, like how did that go today? Like, did I. Was I able to do that? Was I able to, to remind myself that I don't know what people are thinking and I can't control it anyway. We can also journal small wins. Like today I noticed that I was able to reframe this and let it go. So, or you know, today I spoke up in a meeting. That's a confidence win, things like that. So this way even feelings become tangible enough to act on. One thing to pause on here. I want you to notice how I'm highlighting, celebrating wins and calling out bright spots, like we really wanna make sure that we do that. So pick off, pick up at section six, aligning goals. So this way even feelings become tangible enough to act on. One thing to pause on here. I want you to notice how I'm highlighting, celebrating wins and calling out like bright spots. Or, you know, bright glimmers or gli, you know, things like that. We really wanna make sure we do that. When we, when we look at, our brain doesn't normally look at that stuff first, so we kind of have to remind it that okay, of course, like there are gonna be things that aren't going as well as I want them to. That's life that always happens, but. Or, and there are also all these things that I'm actually doing all right at like, you know, and this is a process like we can't expect to try to reach a goal and just immediately, you know, be good at it or, you know, do it well. That's not really realistic. And also if we think about a goal as something that. Helps us grow. Like if we're really connecting with what matters to us and we're on a, the path of reaching that goal, there are gonna be a lot of things on that path that we're gonna learn, and that includes. Some failure, you know, define that how you want. But that includes, you know, tripping, getting tripped up sometimes. It's like when you're hiking and some if you're walking along enjoying the scenery and all of a sudden you trip on a rock. It's kind of that way, right? So yeah, you just pick yourself back up and, you know, they're still pretty scenery. So now let's zoom out a little bit. Your goals, I think, personally should honor all three pillars

Aligning Goals with Wellness Pillars

22:07

of wellness that I talk about all the time. So we have, you know, our body pillars, energy, strength, physical health our mind is focus, clarity, learning, mental health. Our spirit is meaning connection, finding joy in life. So if you. Look at your goals for the year. Like you don't necessarily need to have a bunch of goals in every pillar or even goals in every, you know, even goals in every pillar, but they do need to sort of support one another. But I would also say pick and, and what I mean by that is, you know, you have, if you have a goal to let's say you have a goal to do a triathlon or something like that, which is a body pillar goal, but you have sort of a sense of, I don't know if I can do that. Well, you also have some mindset work to do there too. So, you know, that needs to support your physical goal. You know, we need to be able to really tap into that mindset of learning growth, the, a growth mindset. Or like similarly, if you have, a goal around finding more meaning in life. Like you might need to set some body goals to like help you do that. You know, like around having more energy to do something that does excite you. Or even having the courage to do something that excites you, which would be more of a mind sort of thing. So, you know, pick one to two goals per propeller max. Don't pick too many goals, folks. I've done that. And you don't, you end up not reaching any. I actually did that last year. I set way too many goals and I mean, I reached some of them, but there were a lot of them that I didn't. And this year I have like four main goals. I have other intentions and things I'd like to work on, but as far as goals, I have four. But yeah, if you have too many, you're gonna burn out. Alignment is the secret. Every goal should move you toward the whole life that you want. Not just fragments of it should all kind of work together. It's gonna feel better that way and you're gonna be more likely to follow through. So let's start to wrap this. No, don't say that. So. Let's reflect a little bit here. So, which outcome goals are most aligned? No. So let's reflect a little bit here. So I want you to take a moment and just sort of think about which outcome

Reflecting on Aligned Goals

24:43

goals are most aligned with my values and my identity. You know, what matters? Who am I becoming? Who do I wanna be? What behaviors can I consi commit to consistently this year? And I think that's a really key thing. Like what can I commit to consistently? And that's the commitment. Like there might be other things that you wanna work on, but you know, we really wanna focus on that consistency, building that, because if we don't do that, we get frustrated and then we give up. So if we can build a little consistency with something, you know, it's like, it's like any habit. We're making it more of a habit and then we can add to it. But if you add too many things, you're not gonna build consistency in any of them. And then the, the other thing to reflect on is like what small actions or practices will support these behaviors? You know, what skills do I need and what small actions or practices can help me develop those skills so I can consistently do those behaviors? The stuff can be tricky. You know, a good goal has a lot of. Different pieces to it in order to make sure it's successful. Or that I, I guess I, that word may not be the one I wanted to use, but don't say that. So some examples of, I, so let me give you an example. So let's just say that. We'll make up somebody named Sarah and she is 42

Example

26:18

and she has three kids and a busy career, and she has a really hard time making time for just things that are fun for herself and she's feeling burned out and stuck. So that's obviously not how she wants to feel. So let's just say that she wants to feel. More alive. She wants to feel, and notice I'm saying she wants to feel not stuck, like, 'cause that's like we're moving away from something we wanna look at. What am I moving towards? Let's just say she wants to feel confident, she wants to feel energetic and courageous. Adventurous, even maybe. So then we look at, okay, well if she wants to feel that, she wants to feel those feelings, like what? Outcome, like would help her feel those things. Maybe it is. She wants to be able to save the money and take the time to go on a short little solo backpacking trip. I'm making this up as I go. And so. That's her goal. That's a, that's a behavior or that's an outcome goal. I wanna save the money to go on a backpacking trip. Solo backpacking trip for a weekend. A a long weekend. So what, what behavior, what skills does she need, first of all? So. Oh no. So no. What skills does she need, first of all? Or maybe these are more like the behaviors that she's going to need to know how to backpack. 'cause let's say she doesn't know how to backpack or she's never done it before. Yes, I've gone on a solo backpacking trip before, when I'd only done it once before, so I've done it kind of not knowing what I'm doing. So this is coming from my own experience. But let's just say that she, she is, she hasn't like this, she needs to acquire the skills of being able to, you know, like know how to set up camp and know how to pack and all that stuff. So the behaviors needed might be like she. The behavior based goals might be, you know, I'm gonna learn about backpacking, I'm gonna learn. And then, and then she can get specific about it in there. You know, maybe it's take a class, I'm gonna take a class on backpacking. As I'm talking about this, I'm noticing that like the behaviors and the skills can kind of be similar. So, you know, she needs to have the skill of don't say that. So the behavior based, ugh, scoot back. So let me make up an example of this. Let's just say we have Sarah, who is 43 and she has three kids who are 15, 12, and 10. I'm just making that up. She, she is, she works. She has a busy career. She's married let's just say she is just feeling very stuck and burned out, tired, and she just, it's not how she wants to feel. So when she thinks about how she does wanna feel, she wants to feel more free and alive and adventurous and courageous, confident. And so she thinks about these feelings and she decides that, okay, one thing that would check a lot of those feelings or like create a lot of those feelings would be she's always wanted to learn how to backpack and do a trip by herself. And so her outcome based goal is, no, how do I do this? So her outcome based goal is like take a solo backpacking trip. So she can definitely, like, that's a great goal. And that's sort of where, you know, it, it's like the compass point. It helps us like, okay, here's the path I'm on. And then the behavior based goal could be, you know, the behavior based goal could be, I'm gonna learn how to backpack and pick a trip. Those are controllables, right? So then what skills does she need? We look at what skills she needs to be able to do and the skills and the behaviors kind of sometimes can like, feel similar, but like what skills she needs to know how to set up camp. She knows, needs to know how to, like, which places are good for solo backpackers to go. She needs to know all the safety stuff like, so she can, you know, look at those And then, actions and practices. So let's just say that like, let's use the example of learning how to backpack, the skill of learning how to backpack actions could be signing up for a class. When I learned how to backpack, I took an overnight. One overnight thing with REI that it was just one learn how to backpack, intro to backpacking kind of thing. Just one night local trail. So, you know, maybe it's that I need the action to sign up for a class. And then the practices might be, you know start walking with my backpack on to get used to it, to having a pack or, maybe, or maybe another practice could be let's just say that it's a little like scary to sign up for a class or, or an overnight. You know, intro trip with the group. Maybe the practices are, I'm gonna get some help reframing my thoughts so I can you know, kind of put to rest those fears that I have. So you get the idea and if you have questions about this, please feel free to reach out. Because it can feel sometimes get a little confusing. But you don't have to know all the answers right now. You don't have to have them all today. The goal is to get clear enough to start taking meaningful action so you can always flush out further as you go based on the feedback that you receive. As you go the, and that's usually feedback from yourself on what's going well, what's not going as well. Yeah. So there you have it, part two of goals with Soul turning clarity into action. You've got your values,

Conclusion and Resources

32:11

your identity, your desired feelings, and now you've got a roadmap for how to bring them to life. So I just want you to remember that goal setting isn't about pressure. It's about momentum. So start small. You track your wins, assess as you go, course correct as you go, and let your soul guide your journey. Like really get into those feelings. Ask yourself often, am I still, is this helping me feel how I wanna feel? Am I on the right path? Am I, is my compass still tuned to the right, you know, the right heading? So I've put together a companion worksheet also for you that kind of guides you through all of this you know, values, feelings, behaviors, actions, skills, all that stuff, right? So you can kind of map out your 2026 goals with soul from start to finish. It's kind of a cheat sheet for you to, to work through that stuff. So check that out in the show notes. And, you know, here's to a year that's meaningful, aligned, and fully. Fully yours, one more year on the path of creating a real brave and unstoppable life that you feel great about. As always, my friends, thank you for tuning in to this episode. I hope it was really helpful if you'd like some help with this. And even if you don't. Really need help with this specifically. I would love it if you'd at least go check out this introductory program I have for new clients. It's called the Wellness Wake Up, but it really helps you it helps you with setting goals. It doesn't necessarily mean we're setting goals about like. Food or nutrition or working out. It can be any kind of goals like that you have. But it's a really, it's only $99 which is a crazy steal. And it basically, I'll help you, we'll kind of do an audit of what's going on right now and help you really create some goals that are actionable and aligned for you. Trust me, I know this, it can be super helpful even. It can be super helpful. So go check it out. I'll drop the link in the show notes and yeah, I'll see you next time. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you. I appreciate you listening and being a part of my community. Until next time.