Transcript: Ängela Bonner: Hello. Welcome to the What's Career Got To Do With It podcast, where we hope to provide a space for honest conversation and information that encourages the listener to take the next steps in their career journey. Wherever you're at in this process, we hope this episode will meet you with affirmation, guidance, and maybe some laughs along the way. Michael "Rudi" Rudisill: On today's episode, we will discuss and answer for many to the questions, why do goals matter, even if we don't always reach them? Yeah, this one's a tough one. Also, we're recording this early in the morning, so be ready for these answers. Maybe there's some apathy in our responses. We'll see what happens. Everybody, let's think about that. Why do goals matter? Just off the top of your head, what do you got for me? Ängela Bonner: You've got to have some sort of pathway to get to where you're going, whether it's a big goal or a little goal, it's just a little step forward each time. Nicole Mitchell: I look at it as competition with self. That's what sometimes motivates me. If I don't have something to strive for that day, what am I doing? Kai Kelley, Jr.: I think goals help you set realistic expectations. I thought immediately about how you season food when you cook. You've got the heavy handed seasoner, and then maybe you're a heavy handed goal setter and then you're like, "Okay, that's a lot." Then you rank it down. It helps you set realistic expectations. Nicole Mitchell: Is this black pepper too much? Kai Kelley, Jr.: Oh my God. Michael "Rudi" Rudisill: What if you're not motivated by goals? Nicole Mitchell: I think maybe take the approach of changing the name. Often when I'm talking to students about networking, I try to take the stigma away from the word and I say, think about it just as a conversation. If goals is a word that is intimidating to you and just takes away some of your will, or it just gives you anxiety, then maybe say, my prize for the day, my aha moment for the day, or what am I going to do this week? You can be something as simple as that. But for me, I think just maybe changing the wording. Ängela Bonner: I think so as well. It's almost like there are things that you have to do. Saturday might be the clean house update, but I really don't want to do it. If I can get through these things, I get, like Nicole said, my prize at the end of the day, I get to go to the mall. I get to go to the movies or whatever, self-care, whatever. Michael "Rudi" Rudisill: I agree. I think we all touched on this. There's short term and there's long term goals. We can reframe them. If we're reframing, how helpful is utilizing the goals of others to set or benchmark our goals? Because I think one of the common things that we see is someone coming into our office and talking about, or even myself. I know when I set goals, I look at other people's goals and say, "Are my goals big enough?" Let's talk a little bit about that. What does it look like for us to utilize the goals of others while also keeping in mind that these goals are our own and not someone else's? Ängela Bonner: I think it goes to that first step of the process and knowing yourself. We've talked about it in previous episodes. Don't compare yourself to others. You have that skeleton, that guideline, whether you're meeting with your mentor and they give you some goals to reach, you also got to know yourself and know that, "Okay, well, it's a big goal, but maybe if I cut it in half, it's still a pretty decent sized goal and it's attainable." Nicole Mitchell: I think along those steps, we just talked about changing the wording around goals. If you keep that same thing in mind, you're getting inspiration from others. You're giving yourself a pass to look at other people's goals. Hopefully, with you seeing that you're inspired to cater them to create your own goals, but it can almost be, again, that little nudge that you need to get past the word goals and just see what oth
