It’s Time to Think About Your Goals

Curt and Katie chat about setting realistic goals instead of making hard to keep New Years resolutions. The wisdom of making lifestyle changes and good habits is discussed as well as making sure your goals are SMART goals.

It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. We are human beings who can now present ourselves as whole people, with authenticity, purpose, and connection. Especially now, when therapists must develop a personal brand to market their practices.

To support you as a whole person and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.

Transcript

Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.

In this episode we talk about goals for the new year:

• Sorting through New Year’s Resolutions, developing goals, and creating habits
• SMART goals
• Why it’s important to have big goals, but also identify the small steps to get there

“I think the reason this topic is important is because when we don’t have goals, we don’t have direction. We don’t know where we’re heading. And oftentimes we become reactive and just kind of, what’s the crisis of the day? What’s the loudest thing, what’s the squeakiest wheel? And when we have goals, we get to kind of step up and look down on the bigger vision, the day to day, steps to get there. And I think that is really helpful when you’re really trying to do something big and important.” – Katie Vernoy, LMFT

• Paying attention to the context of your life when creating goals
• Assessing what’s realistic and what is an appropriate stretch goal
• The importance of accountability
• How to balance what you put out there and what you keep under wraps
• Celebrating accomplishment
• How specific you need to be to create true life-style changes (and how long they really take)

“I think that a lot of us grew up kind of under this adage of it takes 21 days or it takes three weeks to really get a new habit going, which is true, but I think that there’s really strong research now that shows that 21 days is really more like 60 days. It’s nine weeks, it’s not three weeks.” – Curt Widhalm, LMFT

• The strategy of goal setting – asking for help, delegating, and deciding what you can just stop doing

 

Resources for Modern Therapists mentioned in this Podcast Episode:

We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!

Profit from the Positive by Greenberg and Maymin

Katie’s Embrace Your Leadership Event (in January 2018 in Los Angeles, CA)

 

Who we are:

Curt Widhalm, LMFT

Curt Widhalm is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is a Board Member at Large for the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, a Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, Adjunct Faculty at Pepperdine University, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com

Katie Vernoy, LMFT

Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant. As a helping professional for two decades, she’s navigated the ups and downs of our unique line of work. She’s run her own solo therapy practice, designed innovative clinical programs, built and managed large, thriving teams of service providers, and consulted hundreds of helping professionals on how to build meaningful AND sustainable practices. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com

A Quick Note:

Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.

Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.

Stay in Touch with Curt, Katie, and the whole Therapy Reimagined #TherapyMovement:

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The Fifty-Minute Hour

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Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Creative Credits:

Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/

Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/

Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):

Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements).

… 0:00
(Opening Advertisement)

Announcer 0:00
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings. It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. We are human beings who can now present ourselves as whole people with authenticity, purpose and connection, especially now when therapists must develop a personal brand to market their practices. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.

Curt Widhalm 0:29
Welcome back to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy and Happy New Year,Katie!

Katie Vernoy 0:35
Happy New Year, Curt!

Curt Widhalm 0:36
And Happy New Year to all of you! This is a time of year where we as a field, I think we know that resolutions don’t really work, but I think that what we can really do is we can move from resolutions to specific goal setting. And this is a really a good time of year to set yourself some practice goals.

Katie Vernoy 0:51
I agree. I think that so often people will limp into the new year after a stressful end of the year, stressful holiday, and kind of just fall back into old patterns with resolutions in place, of course, that then they fail at.

Curt Widhalm 1:06
Old patterns are the easiest.

Katie Vernoy 1:08
Yes, they are. Of course they are. But I think you and I are actually, I think, pretty good at setting and meeting goals. So I figured we could talk about it and give people some ideas. But for me, I think the reason this topic is important is because when we don’t have goals, we don’t have direction. We don’t know where we’re heading. And oftentimes we become reactive and just kind of, what’s the crisis of the day? What’s the loudest thing, what’s the squeakiest wheel? And when we have goals, we get to kind of step up and look down on the bigger vision, the day to day, steps to get there. And I think that is really helpful when you’re really trying to do something big and important.

Curt Widhalm 1:42
Sure, and this builds on some of our previous episodes as well. Our previous episode with Maureen Werrbach on building group practices, she talked about the importance of having a business plan and an ongoing one at that. This builds on our ideas around time management, of really being able to reprioritize what we’re doing, but even beyond what we’ve previously talked about, I think the foundation of a lot of goals really comes from SMART goals, those that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.

Katie Vernoy 2:10
I’ve heard Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant to the big picture and Time bound. I think there’s so many different ways that comes down, but I think what it really speaks to is making sure that you have the big vision that you can tie these SMART goals to, and then that you make sure that you have a timeline to get them done, and that they’re specific enough that you know what you’re doing.

Curt Widhalm 2:30
What are some of the goals that you’re looking at in your practice this year?

Katie Vernoy 2:33
I think a big goal is really simplifying and making sure that I’m working you know, the the cliche working smarter, not harder. I know that oftentimes, when there’s shiny objects and fun things that are coming down the pike, I can get really engaged in those things, and then all of a sudden, chaos ensues, because there’s something new, there’s a new project, there’s something going on. And so for me, I think the big goal is really getting very specific in the systems and the structures that I have in place that will support creativity, because everything else is running smoothly.

Curt Widhalm 3:02
And for me, I’m at a point in my practice where I’ve really been fortunate enough that I’ve built a marketing-ness around me that has allowed me to keep a pretty full practice. So a lot of my energy and attention this year is focused on the Therapy Reimagined conference that we’re putting on, being able to fill the seats, being able to put on a great conference. But I think even just beyond what I’m talking about now is talking about the importance of me needing to set a plan for how I’m gonna go about doing that here in January, as opposed to, oh, it’s like August. Shoot, I have six weeks before this is happening.

Katie Vernoy 3:36
Yeah, I think it’s not procrastinating.

Curt Widhalm 3:38
Not procrastinating, which has been a great habit of mine for many, many years. I’ve talked about it before on the show. But really what a lot of this does mean is we’re talking about different aspects of different types of practice that a lot of therapists can get into. For beginning therapists this might be incorporating a new system of note keeping, or electronic health records. Might be in developing a new and updated marketing plan for the year. It might be adding new clinicians to your practice to work underneath you. Whatever your goal may be, it needs to be something that you have. One of my previous lives, I was a competitive distance runner, and I’m a actually certified level two USA Track and field coach. I coached a large group, and I would talk about, have goals. You’re better off having goals than not having goals. And you can have different goals going on at the same time. At least in the marathon running world, there was kind of the end goal of Go and finish the marathon. But within each individual day, there was a necessity for the type of practice that you were doing on that day. Some days it was long and slow runs. Some days it was short and very fast runs. The way that I see that this translates to our practices is that I can have a goal that’s set for October. I can have a goal for a gross amount of income that I want to bring in this year, but I also need to have day to day goals that help me build up to that as well.

Katie Vernoy 4:59
I think what happens for me is I can have those big goals as well, but until I get down to the very small details of very specific goals that I take on day to day, I don’t make progress. I just kind of get overwhelmed by the big goals. And so I think that’s really important to think about. You know, start with the big goals so you know where you’re heading, but then kind of keep stepping back into the smaller and smaller steps.

Curt Widhalm 5:22
And a big part of this is knowing what you’re realistically capable of. That there’s having a full practice, but if you’re also the parent of small children, and you’re the one who is available to pick up sick kids from school, that you’re the one who might need to have the more flexible schedule because of whatever is going on in your household. Then it might not be realistic to say I want to build a practice that’s 28-30 clients a week, because you’re tied to so many different people that it might not be as easy to get out of the office at those times.

Katie Vernoy 5:53
I think that can be hard, because I think a lot of people will underestimate how much time or energy something takes. They don’t put in buffer zones or different things for the unexpected, like picking up a sick child from school. And so really being able to assess what’s realistic for you, what’s realistic for your responsibilities and your family, and overestimating how much time and energy you’re going to need for stuff can be really important in setting realistic goals for yourself and your business.

Curt Widhalm 6:19
And this is where it can really benefit you to have some sort of accountability partner in working on your goals. Somebody that you can bounce ideas off of to see if what you’re doing is realistic. If it’s something that having a timeline for is really capable of being able to achieve your goals. It might be something where you turn to a mentor who has more experience and what you’re specifically working towards to see what some of the pitfalls might be. I know for me specifically, I travel a lot for the work that I do, and there’s a lot of times where I come back from conferences and I need a day back in order to really get myself back into the groove of being fully present for my clients when I get back to the office. Which really runs counter to the type of personality that I have, which is trying to get as much done in as efficient of a way as possible. But I have found, over and over again that I just find myself burnt on the first day of the week after returning from a conference the previous night. I wish that I would have somebody earlier in my career who is like, this is really something that you can’t maintain for a very long time.

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Katie Vernoy 7:22
I think it can be really important to have those people in your life who can hold you accountable, who can remind you of what’s realistic, because we often forget. I think our instinct is to respond, move forward, fill up the schedule, that kind of stuff, and it can be really hard for us to do that for ourselves. And so when we have accountability partners, when we have people who we’ve shared our rhythms with, who know what we do best, it can be a really good reminder. Not having an accountability partner, kind of keeping those things to yourself can keep you obviously unaccountable, but it can keep you really focused on kind of doing what you can do, versus stretching and reaching towards what you could do, that accountability partner can keep you going forward. I know, for me, just the stuff that we’re doing together, we’re naturally each other’s accountability partners, and I think we’ve accomplished things really quickly.

Curt Widhalm 8:11
Yeah.

Katie Vernoy 8:12
You know, getting episodes up and making sure that we’re moving forward with our goals for the event. Knowing that I’m going to be talking with you and that we’re supposed to be making progress. I’m excited to do it. It’s hugely exciting for me, but there’s so many other things that go on in life that can distract me. But I know, like, Hey, I’m going to be talking to Curt later this week. I better progress on that.

Curt Widhalm 8:31
And I think that there’s definitely a limit in how much you want to put things out there, that there’s research that shows that the more people that you tell about a goal that you’re working towards, the more that your brain actually registers their feedback of, oh, that’s a good idea. That your brain registers that as having already achieved that goal.

Katie Vernoy 8:49
Yeah, that’s really wild. You don’t think about it, but when you rehearse something over and over again, it ends up like you’ve already done it.

Curt Widhalm 8:56
You can find yourself talking about, in 2018 I want to accomplish this, or in this year, I want to achieve this other goal. And the more people that you tell about it, and the more often that you find yourself repeating it, the less likely you are likely going to be able to follow through on that. It’s better overall, for your mental health, for your practice building that you share with people what you’ve already achieved. That outside of your accountability partner, outside of a business coach, if that’s who you’re working with, that you kind of keep things under wraps. That you work on these specific goals in a way that is best likely to benefit you.

Katie Vernoy 9:32
That’s something I struggle with because I get so excited about my big ideas, and I want to share them, but I think it’s really important to think about share what you’ve accomplished. And I think some helping professionals and a lot of therapists would have a hard time with that, because it seems big headed and like ambitious and stuff like that. And that’s not necessarily something that we like to be seen as, but I think it is important to recognize our accomplishments, to share what we’ve been working on, what we’re doing, but not to get so focused on what’s going to happen in the future, because externally, when we’re talking about it, because if it ends up shifting and changing, then it can look like you’ve not accomplished it, and that you’re not living up to your promises. If you put it out there too much, like you said, it can feel like that it’s already done, and so you don’t put the effort towards it. And so it really is a balance of being able to share what you’re doing, where you’re going, and moving your goals forward. It’s that’s such interesting research. I hadn’t heard that before, Curt.

Curt Widhalm 10:21
This also goes kind of contrary to a lot of the ways that I’ve practiced before. That I would get to networking meetings and not really necessarily have something prepared to announce, but I would kind of put something out to the room is, oh, in October, I’m going to do this training, or I’m going to hold this event with no previous planning, and just kind of hoping that the public embarrassment of not getting it done, would actually help me to get it done on time. And it’s worked for me for a very long time. But I think that I’m kind of in the minority of somebody who can put myself into that kind of situation. But I’ve found that the more that I’ve done that I’m noticing that I’m missing out on those deadlines more and more often.

Katie Vernoy 10:56
Interesting. Yeah, I think that there’s a balance there, because I you don’t want to over plan before you put something out there either. You want to make sure that if you set a goal, that you start moving towards it. But like with events, you don’t want to over plan unless people are signing up and getting ready to go. So I think there’s a balance. You want to make sure that you have enough of a momentum forward before you put something out there, but you don’t want to over plan so that you never put it out there. Does that make sense?

Curt Widhalm 11:19
It makes a lot of sense. As I’ve gotten busier, as my responsibilities fall to more and more people, the less time that I have in my schedule to be able to fill in or catch up on some of the things that I promise out to a more general audience. And then I find myself in situations where I have people coming up to me and saying, I haven’t seen any advertisements for your event that’s in like three weeks, and then I’m having to like, Oh no, this is totally just planned to be, like a low key event with like eight people. And…

Katie Vernoy 11:49
Yeah, yeah, no, that can feel pretty bad.

Curt Widhalm 11:51
Another part of this is really looking at how our habits are built. A lot of therapists know, and working with our clients that we don’t talk about building resolutions in the new year, but making lifestyle changes. That way, resolutions can move from I want to lose 10 pounds to I want to have a more healthy eating style. It kind of runs parallel to what we’re talking about today. We are asking you to be more specific in the goals that you are trying to develop for this year. But largely what it comes down to is any major change is a habit building change.

Katie Vernoy 12:22
For sure.

Curt Widhalm 12:23
And I think that a lot of us grew up kind of under this adage of it takes 21 days or it takes three weeks to really get a new habit going, which is true, but I think that there’s really strong research now that shows that 21 days is really more like 60 days. It’s nine weeks, it’s not three weeks.

Katie Vernoy 12:40
That’s pretty intense, because I think it requires more sustainability than things that people do for 21 days. There’s all these 21 day cleanses or different things that people do to kind of jump start a goal. And when people have to look at nine weeks versus three, it can seem really daunting. But that even speaks more clearly to what you set out to do has to be realistic and sustainable. It can’t be something that you only do for 21 days, because meeting a goal isn’t just in 21 days.

Curt Widhalm 13:07
My real experience, my real strong experience, first came when I was being trained as an Applied Behavior Analysis therapist, an ABA therapist, which really focused on shaping a child in the autism spectrum’s behavior. We came up with these really specific behavioral goals. As a treatment team always left room for we’re only going to focus, we’re really only going to prioritize on two to three changes at a time that we don’t want to overwhelm something that’s going to take a really long time to be dissipated with everything else that could be going on. And so not only do we want you to have SMART goals, realistic goals, but what you’re realistically going to be able to change in a number of different ways. Because the more things that you attempt to take on at a time, the more likely that you’re going to miss out on some of them, which leads to old habits, which leads to, I’m not going to be able to maintain any of this kind of thinking.

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Katie Vernoy 13:59
Giving up. There’s a book I’m reading right now that I want to share. It’s called Profit from the Positive. I’ll put the information in the show notes, but it’s talking about research that speaks exactly to that. You want to make sure that you’re setting realistic goals. You want to make sure that they’re stretch goals, that you’re actually challenging yourself, but you want to make sure the realistic goals. But yeah, you have to set up habits and things that you can consistently do, and looking at making sure that the habits are super specific as well, making sure that you know when you’re going to do these things, where you’re going to be, what it’s going to look like, so that you can imagine actually doing it. Because I think oftentimes people will say, Well, I’m going to change my eating habits, but they haven’t really looked at, how do you put that into practice? And when you start actually putting all the pieces that would be required to put it into practice, it really shows you how much you can do. You know, can you get to the grocery store every couple of days if you’re wanting only fresh fruits and vegetables and fresh produce and meats and that kind of stuff, can you actually spend the time cooking and preparing things? Or do you need to set it up in a slightly different way? And so it’s something where being able to really get so specific and actually imagine it in action, and these habits in action can be really critical in actually being successful in making these lifestyle changes.

Curt Widhalm 15:09
There’s also another opportunity here to ask people for help as part of your plan, without necessarily losing in that accountability slash broadcasting spectrum of things. That if I wanted to grow our podcast listenership this year, I would ask all of you to share our podcast with multiple friends.

Katie Vernoy 15:30
Is that an actual ask right now?

Curt Widhalm 15:32
A blatant attempt to just build our followership. But there is something in that that I’m trying to do something, and it’s only so much that I can do. I do need help sometimes. That I’m as much as I like to think, that I’m this magical person who can accomplish everything myself, that I do need help from time to time from other people to achieve goals or things that I might need to extend beyond my own time.

Katie Vernoy 15:57
I have that, too. I definitely need help myself. I know that if I don’t actually set up accountability partners for small things, I won’t do it. If somebody’s not relying on me to go for a walk, or someone’s not relying on me to make a healthy breakfast, I don’t do it. I don’t do it for myself. So I think both asking for help, because you’re more likely to be able to be successful when you have all the resources and tools and support that you need, but also knowing yourself and knowing whether or not you’re going to do something just for yourself, or you actually do need someone else to help you out.

Curt Widhalm 15:57
And this can permeate to a lot of different parts of your practice as well. This might be actually investing in a assistant to do some of the work that eats up a lot of your time. You might need to go into looking at how you set up your goals as: where is my time being wasted, if I’m spending a lot of time creating a billing system that is taking several hours out of each day that you can pay someone $15 an hour for, for example. When you look at that compared to what your session fees are, are you really at this point in your career with a master’s degree or a doctorate degree, are you really only worth $15 an hour in those areas? To make some of those decisions, to move forward in a way that benefits you, to where you’re free to do some of the things that are worthy of your investment.

Katie Vernoy 17:10
When I started my private practice, I was working full time, and I was managing other people, and so I knew how to delegate, because I was already doing it. But I knew I wasn’t going to be able to have a private practice if I didn’t delegate all that stuff out. And when you were talking about, are you worth $15 an hour for those activities? You’re worth way less than $15 an hour for those activities because they’re better at it than you. So not only are you not doing what you do well, which you get paid potentially 10 times that or more, but you’re actually going to get more value from having someone else do your bookkeeping, your billing, making sure that you have the electronic health records set up, or you have the systems in place so that that you can actually get things done quickly. It’s part of the goal setting is really in the strategy is making sure that you’ve identified what do you do, and what do you delegate, and then what do you stop doing? I think that’s another thing that some people don’t think about as goals. Kind of the things that you stop doing, because if you’re adding things in, it’s important to stop doing those things. And one way is delegating, but one thing is just stop doing it. Is there anything that you want to stop doing, Curt?

Curt Widhalm 18:09
There’s plenty that I want to stop doing. Putting me on the spot here a little bit. But really, as far as my practice is concerned, I made a very conscious effort at the end of this last year to only use my Friday time for networking professional events and do catch up sessions with clients. Do not make it a regular session day with clients. What this has done for me is it’s really allowed me a lot more freedom and being able to focus more on professional development, both in learning and in teaching, but it’s also helped my clients to be more accountable to their schedules as well. I think as I go forward and looking into this next year, one of the things that I do really want to improve upon is not over committing myself into create as a positive thing, more consistent self care plan, rather than leaving that as a thing that’s kind of left to whenever it fits into the day, but as a more active part of my practice. I’m in the habit of turning things into a very positive goal, it sounds like because I’m talking out loud. But as far as specific things to really stop doing, I will offer this then that I don’t need to have a hand in creating every single step of every single event that I’m putting on. That I have team members now. I have professionals who help me now, who are better at designing ads, who are better at talking with venues and returning phone calls when I’m in session. So that way, I’m not trying to wake up early in the morning to get things done before my family is up and moving, that I’m not staying up way too late, doing things that I have time to do the things that continue to push me forward.

Katie Vernoy 18:10
I love that that makes me happy. I think that’s another thing that that we share. I know, especially when starting something new, it’s hard to not have your hand in every piece. And I think for me, I’m gonna stop doing everything as well. I’ve been working with teams, you know, with my team, for a long time, but there’s additional stuff that I know that I can delegate. There’s additional stuff that I know that I can stop doing completely. And so for me, I’m going to stop taking things on that aren’t really in alignment with the big vision of what we’re doing with Therapy Reimagined, with the big vision of what I’m doing in my own work. I want to make sure that I stop getting distracted by shiny objects, because I think that can it’s super exciting. It’s super fun to do something new, but there’s so many things that need to really go well with this vision and mission that we have, and so I think that’s the thing I’m going to stop doing over the next year.

Curt Widhalm 20:37
In summary, have goals, be smart about them, make sure that they’re things that you really can and will change about yourself this year. Have somebody that you’re accountable to to check in on your progress on this and make it a regular check in. And be productive. Be somebody that is continuing to grow and continuing to evolve and continuing to make things work.

Katie Vernoy 21:00
When you’re working on your goals, it can be helpful to have a time to vision and a time to get together with like minded individuals. I just want to share that I will be having an event in January of 2018 in Los Angeles, and so it’s going to be about embracing your leadership and really making sure that you’re setting goals and you’re putting systems in place that will nurture you in the new year. So please check out the show notes if you if that’s of interest to you, and I’d love to see you in person in Los Angeles.

Curt Widhalm 21:27
And check us out at mtsgpodcast.com. You can follow us on our social media. Leave us with either emails or hashtag modern therapist problems on social media. We do check those out pretty regularly, and we’ll probably even turn them into a future episode, but until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy.

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Announcer 21:48
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