Fun First: How to Set Inspired Goals (and Reach Them!)

Makena: Happy New Year.

Gigi: Happy New Year. I’m off. We had so much fun.

Makena: Yeah. 2026 is here. Woohoo. Hopefully you had a relaxing and nourishing holiday season. I know we did. We are very excited to be back for another year on the podcast. May is going to be our two-year anniversary. Wow. Of having the podcast. So long! Yeah. So thank you to everybody that’s been with us for a while and listening, and also, of course, our new listeners. 

We love having you here, and by the way, let us know what you’re loving because we always love hearing from you. It’s like every once in a while someone’s like, “Oh my gosh, this episode or that thing,” and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, there’s actually people listening.”

Gigi: Yeah.

Makena: Because it just feels like we record these and then occasionally we hear from someone listening. Exactly. So please feel free to reach out to us anytime. You can always email us at support@wayofthemuse.com and we will get your email there. 

So, all that being said, we have a great topic for you today that is about goal-setting—how do you really go for your goals? 

Some people set resolutions, right? I think that’s kind of gone out of style a little bit. But how do you go for your goals, your dreams, and do it in such a way that you don’t lose sight of them, but it’s also not this stressful thing where you’re like, “I don’t know how this is ever going to happen,” and then you sort of give up part way—which is what so much of the time happens, right, when we’re going for something.

Gigi: The other thing I see happen is people just pressure themselves. It becomes, you know, it becomes this pressure thing during the year and then frustration. There’s such a different approach. We just did a class on this to really share with the women how to approach this in such a way that you still are super focused and you still very much know what you want to create in the year, but also you can relax and take actions and know that it’s going to happen because you’re doing what I call intentional action on a daily basis.

Makena: Yeah, I love that. It is really about setting those goals. We call them “games”—with an M, like playing a game. But the other day on our call for our mastermind, one of the women thought we said “gains” with an N and we were like, well, that kind of works too! 

So whatever you want to call it—goals, games, gains—it’s really great to look at, of course, where do you want to be at the end of this year? That’s where it begins. 

Hopefully, you have a process to do this from a place of desire, from a place of aliveness—not just from the mind. That’s something we really work with our clients around and did on the call the other day to help them really see, again, what do you really, really want? Not the laundry list of things you think you should do or setting these pie-in-the-sky goals that you get frustrated about because you’re not anywhere close. 

I think we did an episode on this last year as well around this time—like a visioning episode. We’ll link that in the show notes as well. That might give you a way to begin here. 

But we really want to talk about how do you, like Gigi’s saying, have intentional action while holding the vision of that longer term goal or game?

Gigi: Yeah. What we shared the other day in the class was that to really see, first of all, what do you love doing? What brings you joy? What are the fun things? Put that into your game or your goals first. With that, there is a different kind of feeling. 

If you’ve calendared the things that you love and the things you know are going to bring energy, that are going to give you more vitality, then when you start to really look at your vision—the clear things that you want to create in the year. What we did is we did it around personal, professional, and physical. You can do it whatever way you want. But in it, then you have some clarity and also this feeling of celebration. In the celebration, you’re also going for your game or your goals.

Makena: Yeah. So there are a couple of things you shared there. One is around the fun first.

Gigi: Right.

Makena: Put the fun first. What’s fun that you want to do this year? What, like you said, energizes you, and making sure you’re putting that into your year. Then, it’s really identifying what are those goals or games—not having 10 or 20 things on that list. The reality is we’re not going to remember all of that. You can have desires, a list of desires, if they’re just fun and you’re going to write them down and that’s that. 

But if you really want to go for a game or a goal, then probably narrow that down. Like you said, we did one professional, one personal, and one physical game for each person. That’s a nice way to do it that really clarifies things. One question that we had everybody answer when they were coming up with their games was: how will you know when you’ve accomplished this? How will you know when you’ve accomplished this? So, if you write down your game—we’re just going to call them games from now on in the podcast.

Gigi: Okay?

Makena: So, if you write it down and then you look at it and you ask the question, “How will I know when I’ve accomplished this?” and you can’t answer that question easily, you need to clarify that game, right? You need to write it in such a way that at the end of the year, you can go, “I did this,” and you can celebrate it. That’s a really important distinction. So that’s one thing. Then, Gigi, how do people start to—how do they keep the games top of mind and be going for them, but also, again, have more fun around it? Or not decide, like, “Oh, this is never going to happen,” and give up? What do you tell people around that?

Gigi: Well, first of all, I want to read a quote that I had put in there the other day because I think it was really good. It says, “Decide exactly what you want in life—I mean, exactly what you cannot live without—and then decide the number of weekly hours you’re willing to give to this purpose. Finally, fight for these hours as if your life depends on it.” That’s from The Lessons of a Wealthy Gardener. Again, that clarity in those three areas gives you right there an amazing game and clarity. Like Makena said, if you define it in such a way where when you do it, you’ll know exactly that you did it. If it was, “I want to make a hundred dollars,” and you made that hundred dollars—

Makena: You—

Gigi: You got your results. One of the ladies—yeah, one of the ladies, it was physically, she was going to have a six-pack by the end of the year. That’s really clear. She said, “If I don’t end up with the six-pack, at least I’ll end up with a two-pack.”

Makena: Yeah, I love that because that takes the pressure out, too, where it’s like she’s going for it. It’s kind of like that quote, “Shoot for the moon and at least you’ll land among the stars,” right? She’s going to shoot for the six-pack, but at least end up with a two-pack as she goes through the year.

Gigi: I had this—there was a certain number I wanted to make in my business one year. So I put the number down and then I thought it through. 

The other thing is the intentional action. You have to really go, “Okay, how can I make this happen? What are the actions that I need to take here?” You want to mentally or even write those down. 

Then I thought about, “How can I get creative and create some other things that would bring in more income?” And so I did that. In my actions, I was taking intentional action, but in a way to create my game but not out of pressure. It’s what I wanted—this particular number. I just kept moving forward and doing, like Makena said, the next right thing on a daily or weekly basis. 

Through the end of the year, when I got to the end of the year and I looked back, I was like, “Oh my gosh, that number came, and even more than I thought.” In that, there was always an awareness, and I think part of what’s the next step each day is right there. That keeps it top of mind, and where we get frustrated is if we’re not doing anything. Then time passes and we feel like, oh my gosh, I have to hurry and get something done here to make my game happen.

Makena: So there are two places we get frustrated, I think. One is if we’re not taking the consistent action. The other place—and the best way to do that is to put those games up on the wall somewhere you’ll see them every day, or put them on your bathroom mirror, hang it there so you see them. 

Then put time into your calendar, even if it’s 30 minutes a day. I think I did the math on the call—I might misquote this—but I think 30 minutes a day was like 90 hours in the year.

Gigi: Yeah, you said—

Makena: Right.

Gigi: Yeah.

Makena: So, imagine doing something for 90 hours in the year. You’re going to move something forward there. That’s how to take consistent action. But the other place I see people get frustrated is they’re working on it, working on it for a month, for two months, and it feels like nothing’s happening.

Gigi: Yeah.

Makena: Let’s say they work on it for three months and they’re not a quarter of the way there. They go, “Oh my gosh, this isn’t going to happen,” right? Then they get frustrated and give up. I really want to talk about that because the way to get around that is to keep focusing on the next right action. You have to then trust that you’re either going to hit the moon or you’re going to land among the stars.

Gigi: Yeah.

Makena: So, you’re either going to hit that goal if you really work on it consistently right up until the end of the year—something’s going to happen, even if it happens right at the end. That’s the thing that’s hard for us—we want to see linear progression, but moving these things forward is not linear. I feel like you have a lot to say on that, so I’m going to hand it over to you. Well—

Gigi: This instant gratification we expect, and the consistency, as we’ve talked about a thousand times, little bits each day add into really big things later. That consistent action, and the intentional action—again, because you’re aware of where you want to go and what you want to do—by doing that, what happens is, you know, again, it goes back to my quote that I love: “Until one is committed, nothing really happens. 

The minute you commit, then oh my gosh, it says what providence moves, things change!” Out of nowhere, opportunities come to you, maybe not even having to do with the action you were taking, but it’s because you were on that consistent next right step.

Makena: Yeah, almost—the way I would think about this is, I think they call it like a “hockey stick curve,” a hockey stick curve of growth. If you imagine what a hockey stick looks like, it’s got a little dip at the bottom and then goes way up. That’s often what happens if people stay consistent for long enough. But ninety percent of people, let’s say—I’m making up the statistic—ninety percent of people stop before that hockey stick growth happens, before they hit the momentum, that growth curve that’s just exponential. They give up, they feel frustrated, they think it’s not going to happen. 

So a really important point with setting your games for the year and going for them is consistency, like we’re saying: calendaring it, looking at it every day, having it somewhere you see it. 

The other point is, stick with it long enough even if it looks like nothing is happening, because little things adding up over time, like you’re saying, opportunities will come out of the blue. We see it time and time and time again. That’s a really important distinction here around going for your games and around really allowing them to happen. 

You gave the example, Gigi, of your big financial goal, and I don’t know if this happened to you, but let’s say you were partway through the year and you hadn’t come close to it yet. Did you just say, “Okay, it’s not going to happen,” and give up?

Gigi: No, no. I kept on, and I didn’t know how, and so, no, I just kept on. I just kept on, and I also was like, I would love for it to happen, if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. But I was definitely still always looking and always planning and thinking. A lot of times, what I do, it’s in the thinking I see. I just keep on seeing it and saying, “How can I do this? Or what could I do differently? Or what could open somewhere?” 

You know, I had a lot of that last year, and that was, too, also because of connections and people sharing and things like that, but doors opened in a very unusual way. I knew something I wanted, and I felt it, and then they started—it started opening up in a way that I could never have imagined in a million years. That’s why I think I love the quote so much, because it says to decide exactly what you want out—

Makena: —of life, and what you cannot live—

Gigi: —without, and what you can’t live without.

Makena: This is the example that’s coming to me, so maybe it’s for me for this coming year. I was thinking if you were trying to sell books, right? We have our book coming out very soon, which is very exciting. 

It’s called The Wisdom that Raised Me: A Daughter’s Journey into Wholeness, Wisdom, and Womanhood. I was just thinking—let’s say you were trying to get people to buy your book, and you wanted to sell thousands of copies, whatever that number is. If you went, “Okay, I want to sell a thousand copies by the end of the year,” and you’re working on that, people are buying, it’s happening little by little, and then you get partway through the year and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m not going to hit my goal, it’s nowhere close.” 

But if you kept at it, then maybe in September, October, November, or December fifteenth for that matter, you get on a podcast or some opportunity comes up, and all of a sudden you sell way past your goal because you tapped into this whole audience. That’s an example of that hockey stick curve. Or, like you’re saying with your financial goal, somebody introduced you to somebody and it opened up a whole market of people. That could happen at any point, but it takes you being consistent and, like you said, kind of unattached, right? We don’t mean unattached like you’re not going for it. We mean unattached like you’re not pressuring yourself about it. I originally heard this concept on one of Oprah’s podcasts years ago. 

I remember Michael Bernard Beckwith was on there, and he talked about—in manifestation, he said, there’s something called the “let go.” 

I’ve always remembered that: the let go. 

He said you know what you want, exactly what you want, you’re clear, you’re going to get it, you’re going out to maybe make it happen, trusting, taking action, and then there’s this bit of if we’re too attached, if we’re holding on too tightly, we actually get in the way. So he said there’s a little bit of this energy of you have to “let go” and trust that you’re only half of the equation. Life, God, the universe, whatever you want to call it, is the other part. You’ve got to trust that it will meet you halfway as long as you’re in that consistent action.

Gigi: I had this with my first book in Germany. I had this happen several times. I told the story on one of the podcasts where, out of the blue, this woman reached out to me—she was a very famous author in Germany—and she said, “You know, I give everyone your book. I haven’t read it, but everybody comes and gives me flowers and chocolates after they read it because their relationships change.” 

She said, “I would love to meet you.” We ended up meeting, and because of her—and we actually ended up doing a speech together and things like that—she put me in several of her books, wrote about me, and then she opened up doors for me to where my books got published in other countries because she was a well-known author and she would always share about me. That was so out of the blue. I could have never imagined that in a million years.

Makena: Yeah.

Gigi: But I wanted to grow and expand my book in Europe at the time, and then that happened. I had so many of those kinds of situations happen through that.

Makena: Awesome. I love that. This is what we’re talking about here: you’re clear on what you want, you’re going for it, you’re asking the question on a daily or weekly basis—when you have that time set aside, and make sure you put that time on your calendar so that it happens—you’re asking the question, “What is my next right step? What is the next thing that moves me forward towards this goal?” 

And then you let go of knowing the A to Z. That’s what I said on the call the other day: you’re not going to know A, B, C, D all the way to Z, exactly how this is going to happen. All you need to know is A. Then, once you’ve done A, you need to know B, and then C, and you keep going. Something will unfold as long as you keep going.

Gigi: Makena—

Makena: This is just—I think it’s an important one, right? I know we’re very passionate about this hilariously small thing, but I just see it all the time. I see it all the time that people just get frustrated and give up or they’re pressuring themselves too much, or there are different versions of this. 

So, it is really key—some of these things we’ve shared about: Pick two or three goals for the year or games, not forty. Know exactly what you want, what you cannot live without in those areas. We have an episode coming out next week—or next episode, which is two weeks from now—on letting go of the shoulds, so that’s a really important one. 

Make sure it’s a goal or a game that you are really excited about, that you really want, not something you just think you should be doing. Then go for it. Take that next right action step and let go of knowing A, B, C, D all the way to Z—just go to the next one and the next one and the next one.

Gigi: At the end of the year, tell us what you did and how you got amazing results and made your games because you did this.

Makena: Absolutely. We were like, wow, this call we led for our mastermind—we do a year-planning call every year and dreaming and visioning—but this particular one I think was just really, really great. I love all of them, but at the end I was like, I think I’m just going to do our process; that’s going to be my year-planning process. So we wanted to share at least a little snippet of it with you all. Happy New Year!

Gigi: Happy, happy New Year. Yeah, great.

Makena: Have a great goal-planning and visioning session, and we’ll see you on the next episode.