How to Set Goals That Actually Change Your Life: The SMARTER Framework

I was cleaning out my closet when I found a notebook from my early twenties. A list of things I wanted to accomplish before I turned 30. Practical things, specific things, personal things. Some of them felt impossible when I wrote them.

I had done all of them.

Including the rental properties, everyone told me a young person couldn't afford. Including the book. Including the Jeep, which turned out to be a bad financial decision. I had written the list down, forgotten about it, and my life had moved toward it anyway.

I went and found Emily and showed her. She looked at the list, looked at me, and said: "You should have made your income goal higher if you knew it was actually going to happen."

We laughed. Then we sat down and wrote a new list.

This episode is the actual goal setting framework Andrew and Emily use to build their life together, including the six areas of life worth examining before you set a single goal, why SMART goals aren't quite enough and what the two extra letters change, the difference between outcome goals and process goals and why most people focus on the wrong one, and why the goals that feel most uncomfortable to write down are usually the ones most worth writing.

This isn't a theory. It's the real thing, including the parts that are messy and imperfect.

If you found a notebook ten years from now with everything you wanted your life to look like, what would be on that list? And what's stopping you from writing it down today?

Money isn't the main currency of a good life. This podcast gives you the tools to build a life of meaning and fulfillment.

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Transcript

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I was cleaning up my closet. One of those afternoons where you decide the pile of notebooks and old papers had gone out of hand and something has to go. I was going through them one by one, school notes, old journals, things I didn't remember writing. Most of it went right to the trash without a second thought. And then I found one that stopped me. I sat down on the edge of a bed and started reading through it. At first I didn't think much of it, just a notebook from my early 20s. But then I slowed down and read it again. It was a list, things I wanted to accomplish before I turned 30, written down when I was somewhere around 22 or 23. Some of them were practical. Own a home, get married, have kids. Some of them were specific. A certain income level, certain net worth, a certain number of rental properties. Some of them were more personal. Write a book, start a business, travel to the Middle East for a mission trip, own a Jeep Wrangler. That one's an oddly specific one. I sat there on that bed for a while, just reading it. Because I had done all of it. Every single thing on that list had happened, including the Jeep, which turned out to be a horrible financial decision. Including the book, but not in the way I assumed it. Including the rental properties that everyone told me that a young person couldn't afford in this market. I had written this list down and forgotten about it. And my life had moved toward it anyway. I went and found Emily and told her. She looked at the list, she looked at me, and then she smiled and said, You should have made your income goal higher if you knew it was actually going to happen. We laughed and then we sat down and we wrote a new list. Now I want to be careful here because I don't want this to sound like a story about how great things are and how incredible we are at achieving things. It's not that. What that notebook showed me is something I think most people never get to see about themselves. You are more capable than you believe you are. And the goals that feel impossible when you write them down have a way of becoming normal by the time you get there. The real estate goal is the one that hit me the hardest when I saw it. Because when I wrote it down, I was in my early 20s. And the narrative I had absorbed from the world, from others around me, was that most people at your age will never be able to buy a property. It's out of reach. The market is too expensive. That's for people who already have their life together. They already have money. They come from money. But I wrote it down anyways. Not because I was certain, because I dared myself to want it. And here's what I've learned about goals since finding that notebook. A goal you dare yourself to want is more powerful than a goal you're confident you can hit. Confidence is comfortable. A dare is alive. The problem isn't that people don't know how to set goals. The problem is that most people either don't set them at all or they set them so safely that achieving them doesn't actually move their life forward. And so I want to give you a framework that genuinely shaped how Emily and I build our life. This isn't a theory, this is actually the thing that we use, including the parts that are messy and imperfect. This is the foundation of how I think about goals, and it starts in six different areas of life. I call it the six F's. You have finances, family, friends, faith, fitness, and freedom. Not because life fits neatly into these six boxes, but because when you look at where people feel stuck, where they feel fulfilled, where they feel like something is missing, it's almost always traces back to one of these six areas. And when you set goals without looking at all six, you end up optimizing one part of your life while neglecting another. I've watched people build incredible financial success while their marriage is falling apart. I've watched people with deep faith in rich relationships who feel physically depleted and financially stressed. The six Fs exist to make you look at the whole picture before you start planning. Finances. Money isn't everything, but it impacts almost everything. How you manage it either creates options in your life or closes them. Family, the people closest to you. What kind of marriage do you want? What kind of parent do you want to be? What kind of son or daughter do you want? Friends, you've heard it before. You become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. That is either a comfort or warning, depending on who those five people are in your life. Faith. For me, it's the foundation everything else is built on. Goals without a purpose beyond yourself have a ceiling. Faith lifts that ceiling. Fitness, your health is the foundation you work from. When your body and mind aren't right, nothing else works at its best. Freedom. This is the one people forget to include. At the end of everything, are you actually living the life you want? Do you have margin? Do you have time for what matters most? When Emily and I sit down to talk about our future, we give ourselves permission to look at all six of these areas, to dream out loud, to ask what we actually want, not just what seems reasonable. See, Emily's practical. She's not someone who gets energized by the vision work the way I do. I love the research. I like thinking things through, imagining of what's possible. She wants to get it done. So what tends to happen is I do some of the thinking ahead of time. And then we go for coffee or we sit down after the kids are in bed and we talk. This isn't a formal session. It's just a real conversation. What does our life look like in five years? What do we want to be true? What needs to change? Those conversations carry into other conversations over weeks and months. That's the real goal setting process. Not just one formal meeting, but a continued conversation about the life you're building together. So let me give you the framework in practical terms. See, I built goals around what I call smarter goals. You've probably all heard of SMART goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. That's a solid framework, but I like to add two more letters that I think are of a difference between a goal that moves your life and a goal that sits on a list. The E is exciting. If a goal doesn't genuinely excite you, you won't stick with it. Simple as that. A goal you feel like you should pursue is not the same as a goal you actually want to chase. If you're not lit up by it, the first hard week will end it. Your goal needs to be something you want, not just something that sounds responsible. The R is for risky. This one pushes back on how most people think about goal setting. If there's no real chance you won't hit it, the goal is probably too small. Risk forces growth. Risk means you're operating beyond where you're already comfortable with. When I wrote down the real estate goal in my early 20s, I had no clear path to making it happen. That was the point. If I could already see exactly how to do it, it wasn't a goal. It was just a task. A smarter goal isn't just clear and trackable, it's energizing and bold. That's the kind of goal that actually changes something. Before you set any new goals, start with reflection. Look back at what you've done before. What happened the last year, the last three years, the last 10? What did you accomplish that you haven't fully acknowledged? What did you learn from the things that didn't work? You can't get an accurate picture of where you're going if you don't know clearly where you've been. Then when you sit down to write goals, keep this in mind. Three non-negotiables maximum. Three goals that you're fully committed to this year. Everything else falls in two categories. Habits, which are small consistent actions that support your goals and ambitions, which are the things you'd love to do someday, but aren't your primary focus right now. Most people fail at goals, not because they lack discipline, but because they're trying to move too many things at once. Three non-negotiables. That's it. The next thing is to focus on process goals, not just outcome goals. An outcome goal is the finish line. Lose 20 pounds, buy a rental property, write a book. A process goal is the daily action that gets you there. Walk 30 minutes a day, save a specific amount each month, write 500 words every morning. You cannot always control the outcome. You can always control the process. Build goals around what you can actually do every day and let the outcomes follow. A few other things worth naming. Your goals don't have to match your spouse's. Emily and I don't share every goal. What matters to me doesn't always feel as urgent to her. And that's okay. What matters is we respect each other's priorities and show up for each other in pursuing. Write it down. A goal in your head is a wish. A goal on paper is a plan. The notebook that I found in the closet existed because at 22, I wrote things down. I didn't just think about them. I didn't just hope for them. I wrote them down and then went on with my life. My life moved toward them. Share your goals with someone. Accountability changes things. Whether you're telling your spouse, a friend, a mentor, the moment someone else knows what you're working toward, the goal gets weight that it didn't have before. And build in regular reviews, monthly and quarterly. Put them in your calendar now before your life fills those dates. A goal without a review process is just a wish without a deadline. Life changes, circumstances change. The goal that made sense in January might need to look different in June. Reviewing regularly means you're steering, not just hoping. And expect challenges. Every meaningful goal comes with setbacks. It's whether you decide ahead of time how you'll respond to it when it does. Failure isn't the opposite of success, it's part of it. After Emily made her joke about the income goal, we sat down and we wrote a new list, bigger goals, goals that scared us a little, goals that required us to believe things about our future that hadn't happened yet. And here's what I've noticed about the goal setting process over the years. The goal that feels most uncomfortable to write down are usually ones most worth writing down. Not because discomfort is the point, because discomfort usually means you actually want it. Some goals don't make you uncomfortable. The ones that require you to become someone new do. You were made for more of a comfort. I truly believe that. I believe it about myself and I believe it about whoever is listening to this right now. The life you want is not out of reach. It is on the other side of a decision to stop waiting until the conditions are perfect and start moving in a direction on purpose. The notebook I found in that closet wasn't magic. It was just a young man who took his own future seriously enough to write it down and then got up every day and lived in a way that moved toward it, even when he forgot that's what he was doing. You don't have to have it all figured out. You just have to start. So here's what I want to ask you: if you found a notebook 10 years from now with everything you want your life to look like, what would be on that list? And then what's stopping you from writing it down today? If this podcast is adding value to you, I want to encourage you to go to our website, thecurrency of Happiness.com. On there, I have a free goal setting guide where you can learn the exact processes that Emily and I have used for all of our goal setting sessions to create the life that we desire.