Ep #59: Harnessing Emotions: The Secret to Achieving Your New Year’s Goals with Bree Nelson

Before you set new year’s goals with yourself, with your kids or for yourself, you are going to want to listen to this episode. Oh my goodness, Bree Nelson is back and she is amazing. And today we talked about setting goals. We talked about the critical things to include in your goal setting, how to measure them and checkpoints and things like that, how far apart checkpoints should be. She also talks about the CTFAR model and how to start with your R line or your results to determine what your goal should be and work back all of those different steps. It was so good.

She talks about determination over motivation, because we all know that motivation doesn’t last for very long. And so she talks about that and how to focus on determination over motivation and how to get rid of this idea of a to-do list and shift to a mindset of becoming. It was an incredible conversation. I am inspired. It’s going to change how I set my goals for the new year and I think it might for you as well. This conversation is coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

Amy: Bree, I am so excited to have you back on the show. Welcome to the podcast.

Bree: Hey, it’s so good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Amy: Yeah. I’m so excited. You were one of our favorite guests in our first year and I just enjoyed talking to you so much. And so our team has been like, “When can we get Bree back on?” And I am so excited about our topic today because I was telling you before we got on, I literally got out my paper and pen to take notes because I’m looking at our topic or outline for today and I’m like “I need this, I need this.” So today we are talking about goal setting and stuff.

But before we get into all the goodness because I’m already just getting excited. Just can you for everyone that maybe has come and joined the podcast since our last chat, can you just tell everybody, just maybe a quick intro about yourself again.

Bree: Sure, okay. I’m Bree Nelson and I am a certified life coach. I went to school at The Life Coach School and I initially found life coaching through Jody Moore, who I love, when I was a mom with four young kids. And it really did change my life, it really did. And I just kept thinking I have to tell people about this. I have to get this into the hands of more people. And then as my kids started getting older, I was like, “These kids need these tools.”

There’s so many things that they are capable of understanding and learning and implementing and just really taking responsibility in their own lives and creating a life that they love and it’s not taught in the schools unfortunately. That would be amazing. But anyway, so it’s kind of a goal of mine to create emotionally intelligent kids and just empower them to create a life that they love. But yeah, I coach kids, I coach anybody eight and up.

Amy: Kids eight and up, can we still be a kid when we’re old? I’m a kid at heart. And I love that you’re starting young, because my gosh, I have teenagers now. And just seeing when they can start learning these skills early, it seems like it has and they have some time to kind of practice some of it and kind of make it become a part of how their brain works and the patterns in their brain.

My gosh, it gives them an advantage as opposed to having to go through trauma or hard things and then suddenly be trying to go backwards and be like, “I’m already in this whirlpool of darkness down here and I’m trying to pull myself back up, let me go learn a whole bunch of new skills”, instead of having them at the beginning. So I just love that this is something that you’re doing and teaching kids. So let’s do it. I think we should share some goodness.

So let’s talk about new year’s goals. Should they be a thing? How do you feel about goals in general? And then maybe specifically new year’s goals, I don’t know, tell me your thoughts. I’ve kind of heard people say, “Yay, new year’s goals.” And other people are like, “Er.” And anyway tell me, tell me your thoughts.

Bree: Oh my gosh, I don’t even really know what my opinion is because I feel like in my own life, my goal setting is very ongoing and shifting and changing. And I feel like that’s the way it is for kids too. Their goals don’t stay the same for them, especially kids are growing and changing so rapidly and so should their goals. But I do also think new year’s is a great time to reflect and it’s a good landmark of time to be like, “Oh.” Reminder, maybe we should take a look at what do we want to be creating. How can we be intentional this year?

I also think the beginning of the school year is such a good marker for kids too. That feels like the new year for them. So, I don’t know. But I definitely think goals are always evolving and changing and you want to take a look at it frequently.

Amy: Yeah. Okay. So I love that. So having big markers can be really helpful to just kind of do a reset if you need to. But the really ideal goal or the ideal way of doing this would be to be checking back in on them regularly and updating kids. A year is such a huge portion of their life. So just trying to set goals, it’s kind of right, okay, I love it. So kind of when we’re setting goals or thinking about goals, what are some things that we should be thinking about as we’re kind of thinking about a goal strategy, what are some things to consider?

Bree: Well, one thing that is important is to decide how you’re going to measure your goal. So I know there’s a lot of goals, especially with kids, I think, that are a little bit tricky to measure concretely, but if you can come up with a way of measurement for those so that you can kind of track progress a little bit. And mostly I feel being able to measure a goal helps you to be able to celebrate how you’re doing and just, I don’t know. It kind of gives you the motivation to keep going when you can see it’s working. It’s making a difference in my life or in someone else’s life.

For instance, I’ll have kids that one of their goals is to be a better friend. And that’s kind of a little bit trickier to be like, “Okay, this is how we measure it. You have five new friends by the end of the year.” And so we find ways to measure that. Teens, you can text five different people a week, or how do you want to show up as a good friend and how can we kind of track that and see the progress that we’re making?

Amy: And I’ve heard something recently that has really stuck with me that I’ve actually been sharing with my kids too, about focusing on the gain, not the gap. And so we’re always kind of the idea of the gap of where we are versus where we want to be. This is what we’re trying to do and we’re not there yet. But the problem is, where we want to be is constantly shifting based on how much progress we’ve made. And so if you’re looking at the gap, it just always feels maybe overwhelming.

And so instead of maybe just always focusing on the gap, take time to really celebrate the gain. And I think that measurement like you said, having a way of measuring it, we can say, “Hey, look we moved.” And so we can kind of celebrate that with ourselves and yeah, it gives you a little bit of courage to keep going so I love that.

Bree: For sure, yeah. Another real quick, I was just thinking as you were saying that, another way that I have done measurements with some of these goals that are a little bit trickier to measure is on a scale of one to ten. Kind of keeping track on how do I feel on a scale of one to ten? And every night just quickly jotting that down or making a note in your phone. Today felt like a seven, today felt like an eight. And averaging those out over the week and then checking in on that. So I don’t know, there’s some creative ways that you can figure out how to measure that for all types of goals.

Amy: I love that. Okay, so then next point and I think we talked about checkpoints. How often would you kind of, if we’re doing it more than once a year or even more than twice a year, back to school, beginning the year. What might be an idea of how often to kind of check back in with yourself on something like your goals?

Bree: Yeah. I mean ideally, I know this is going to sound like very often, but ideally once a week on Sunday, you just kind of pick a day and just check-in with yourself. The more often we’re checking in, the better we probably are doing at sticking to it. And for my clients, we meet weekly or biweekly. That’s always what we do first is, do a check-in, how’s things going? How to go with this that we are working on this week, do we need to shift or alter anything?

And celebrating, I think when you do your check-ins, that’s the biggest part of the check-ins is, find the things even if there’s only one thing that you can find that you did well working towards that goal. Celebrate that. Goals should be fun. We should not be beating ourselves up for what we’re not doing. Just focus on the things that you did do well. And that’s going to help continue to give you the drive to keep working on it. So as often as weekly is kind of what I would say but at least once a month for sure.

Amy: Alright. Well, and I think somehow weekly feels easier to remember than monthly, I think just because, I don’t know, there’s a day. Whereas a day every day, every month maybe if you’re doing it the first of the month, maybe. But I don’t know, weekly feels more like this is what we do every Sunday. We stop for a few minutes and sit down. And I think it could be something so fun too. If you could find a way to make it, I’m always about finding a way to make it fun.

But if you could make it just such a fun bonding time. We’re all going to sit down and we’re going to get our fancy pens and take notes or the marker board is a fun one that my kids love to get out, the marker board and draw on the marker board. And you could draw your scale or you could draw where you think you did or I don’t know, things like that I think really involve kids a little bit. So good. So I’m looking at our notes and I’m so excited to get to the next part. So there’s a model that you have for this and I’m like, “Teach me the model. I love models.” But what is this model, this goodness that I see?

Bree: Oh, my goodness. Well, the model, I spoke about it a little bit in my last episode that I did with you guys, but I will go over it really quickly. And we just call it the CTFAR model. It’s Brooke Castillo’s model, she created it for The Life Coach School. And really quick, the C stands for circumstance. The T stands for thoughts. The F is your feeling. The A is your action. And the R is your result. So you have a circumstance or something that happens in your life. You have a thought about it that then creates a feeling in your body.

And from that feeling, our feeling is our fuel that drives all of our action and then our actions create our results. But what we do when we talk about goals is that we actually start at the bottom in the result line. And we talk about what do you want to create in your life, what is your goal? And you put your goal in the result line and then you work backwards from there. So then you just ask yourself, what actions are going to create this result in my life? And then above actions are your feelings. What feeling is going to drive me to take these actions?

And then from there, there’s a thought always, even though we’re not usually aware of it. This is the biggest part of being more intentional about creating and accomplishing these goals in our life is what are we thinking. What are we thinking that’s creating a feeling that’s then going to generate these actions and create this result in our life? So I teach the kids, kids literally eight years old, understand the model. And to them, I’m always like, “Do you have any questions about it?” And they’re like, “No, it just is how the world works.” It just makes sense to them.

And so then you just start plugging things in and that’s how we really set goals in our sessions.

Amy: I love that so much because I’m familiar with the model. I’ve listened to Brooke Castillo’s podcast for a couple of years now, and it was kind of game changing for me. I love it for myself. But yeah, I love that idea of taking it around your goal setting and kind of starting with result and moving backwards. And I like just the practicality of it. It just seems so beautiful, but you’re incorporating all the pieces. So it’s not like we’re just trying to get better at cleaning our room. We’re trying to look at our thoughts around what’s going on in our room.

Or if I want to move more, I want to get outside more and play more, what’s the thought that’s happening that would drive an emotion that would change? I mean, all of it. I love the breaking that down and I love working backwards with that and letting them choose their results. And then helping them see how to get it because my gosh, if they can practice that now in smaller things as they get older and they’re like, “I want a result in my life”, they know the model for it and they can just use the formula and get it, which is so cool.

Bree: Right, exactly. I mean, you think about how often, especially adults, we’re setting these goals and we’re not really consciously aware that our thought is a very negative thought. For example, if your goal is to lose weight, you may have a thought, so that I can love myself or so that I can look better or whatever. But that’s probably going to generate a feeling that’s not super motivating to keep going on your goal.

Your thought is, I hate the way I look or something like that, it’s going to generate a feeling that’s going to work for a little bit, a short period of time, but it’s not going to work long term coming from a place of not loving yourself. So it’s super important to back it up all the way to the thought and have a compelling why behind what you’re doing.

Amy: Oh my gosh, that’s so game changing. Can we relabel this one as for adults, you’re going to want to listen to this episode, not just for children?

Bree: Yes, exactly. Tagline it.

Amy: I love it, love it, love it. And then you say a big takeaway on this piece is being willing to feel terrible and do it anyway because everyone’s like, “Yeah, I want to feel terrible, it’s going to be so great. Yay, we have so much to look forward to.” Can you talk to me around what do you mean and how do we get to being willing to feel terrible? Talk me through that and yeah, let’s break that one down.

Bree: Totally. That is one thing that I work with all people on constantly. And I work within myself, I’m always like, “Bree, you can feel embarrassed or scared or whatever and do the thing anyways.” A lot of times we’re waiting until we feel motivated or we feel excited to do something. And oftentimes that’s not the first thing we’re going to feel, unfortunately. So I talk a lot about how to feel these feelings that are uncomfortable and that doesn’t mean that the goal that we have is not a good goal or we shouldn’t keep going after that goal.

All it means is that we get to learn how to feel uncomfortable emotions and ride the wave. Emotions are like a wave, they come and go. They’re not going to stay forever. So feel those uncomfortable emotions and do the thing anyway. Literally you can accomplish anything in your life if you are willing to open yourself up to feel some uncomfortable emotions and move through it and do the thing anyways.

Amy: That is so powerful. And I feel like our caveman brain, whatever, our natural brain is trying to protect us from discomfort and things that we don’t like. And that I think somehow we think that that’s healthy to protect ourselves from negative emotions or negative feelings or whatever.

That’s just part of being alive. And I remember hearing Brooke say one time that confidence is being willing to face any emotion. And I loved that. If we’re scared of feeling scared, if we’re scared of feeling really any emotion, that’s not comfortable, that’s scary.

But if we know, if we just know that we can handle whatever emotions come, knowing that there will be some good ones and there will be some not so good ones or comfortable ones, I guess. All emotions are not good or bad but just if we’re willing to just sit with whatever comes, then it’s not so scary to live life anymore because whatever emotions come, we know we can handle it. And I think empowering children to feel that, it’s okay to feel yucky sometimes. That’s actually really healthy, that means you’re alive. Yeah, I love that idea.

Bree: Yeah. And I feel like too, we also always want to remind ourselves and our children, without adding any shame or anything in it, we are the creator of our emotions. If you look at the model again, it’s not the doing of the thing that’s creating our emotion. There is a thought in there that’s generating an emotion in us, which is fine. Exactly like you said, there’s no bad emotions, there are just some that are a little more comfortable than others.

But once you kind of sit with it and you understand that you’re the creator of it, there comes a point where you’re like, “Okay, well, maybe I want to look at changing that. What am I thinking? Am I thinking that people might laugh at me? I might fail. What am I thinking that’s creating this nervousness or anxiety or embarrassment or fear or whatever it is?” And it’s totally fine but there may come a point where you want to look at that and change it if you want, you can. That’s part of really what I teach is you can if you want, change it.

Amy: That’s so empowering. And I like this idea too, around goals. One of the other thoughts that I had while we were talking and talking about confidence and you say, be willing to feel terrible and do it anyway, you can accomplish anything. A quote that I heard that confidence comes after competence. And so often we’re waiting to feel confident to go do something, but we don’t really get confident at something till we’re good at it, till we know we can do it till we’ve done it a lot of times. That comes after doing it. So you have to go do stuff.

And it’s not going to look always really great the first time or it might not be totally comfortable or whatever. But the more you do it, the more competent you become, and that naturally builds confidence because then you know you’re really good at it. So I love that idea too, that we don’t have to just be amazing at something when we’ve never done it before, and confidence comes with giving a good old fashioned, just doing it.

Bree: Right. Well, and I do, Brooke Castillo explains there’s a difference between self-confidence and confidence. And a lot of times we are waiting to do the thing until we feel confident. And so what you said is so important to remember that oftentimes the confidence comes after we do the thing from the competence. But Brooke Castillo talks about having self-confidence. And that, the way she kind of defines that is a willingness to feel any emotion.

I can have self-confidence in myself that I will have my own back, that I will support myself, that I will be willing to feel and go through this. I’m willing to do that. I have self-confidence. And then as you do the thing and you become more competent then you do create confidence. But we have to start with just confidence in ourself, our willingness to feel whatever we need to feel to get to competency.

Amy: So what if you’re having kids that are feeling unmotivated, I don’t know, what do we do with that? Can we only get them to do things that they already want to do or how do we help them deal with lack of motivation maybe?

Bree: Yeah. Well, that’s a really good question. I feel a lot of times these kids aren’t going to feel motivated to do the things that they want to do. So first of all, I always explain to kids, feeling motivated is not necessarily the goal. So a lot of times we intentionally choose the emotion of determination as opposed to motivation. And determination does include some positive emotions but also some negative emotions. And so switching that is really important for them because if we’re waiting to feel motivated, then we’re just going to be waiting around most of the time.

We’re going to have bursts of motivation but it’s not long lasting. So swapping that to determination is kind of the first thing I do. But another really, really big thing is to understand the why behind it and why are we even doing this? As I’m working with clients on their grades. It’s end of term right now where we are and they’re feeling it, the kids are feeling it. And so talking about these goals for their grades, why do you want to do that? Who are you becoming through setting this goal and accomplishing this? That’s our why. I’m becoming somebody who shows up for class when I’m scheduled to be there.

I’m becoming somebody who, when there’s an assignment or a task that’s given to me, I can do it in a timely manner and turn it back in. And why is that important for us in our life? How does that help you in the long run to become somebody like that? And really especially for teenagers helping them because they’re so, rightly so, focused on the present moment and what feels good right now. And they have a little bit of a harder time looking to the future and making decisions for their future.

So we spend some time laying that out with them, and why are we really doing this? And so if they can understand, some session I just had this week was just them coming to the realization that because as I’m older and this is the job I would like to do. They’re going to be things that I need to finish at the date I say they’re going to be finished. I need to be able to show up to the meetings that I’m expected to be at. We are building that muscle right now. That’s why we’re doing these things, to become who we want to become.

Amy: Oh, my gosh, so good.

Bree: That really, really helps them. And I feel like I’m constantly reminding them because in their minds, they’re just like, I just want to get an A because I want to feel good and I want my parents to be proud. And I’m just like, “Hold on one second. That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself.” So let’s talk about, but why, why are we doing this? And it tends to instill more motivation. So that’s one tip.

Amy: Taking it like the to-do and switching it to becoming I think that is so good. And so I just love that. I kind of want to do that with myself too. We are almost out of time but I feel like I could talk to you forever. Really quick before we go, talk to me a little bit about flexibility. There was a little bit of that and so tell me a little bit about that.

Bree: Yeah, so with goals, we even talked about this in the beginning. They change, they shift frequently. And so we want to work on not having such a fixed mindset, it has to be this specific way of doing it to get to this end result. We have to be willing to be able to change and shift those things. And so one thing that you can do with your kids and it’s kind of fun, there’s YouTube videos on this, but I always ask the kids, “Do you know what the world’s most flexible animal is?” And they’re like, “I don’t know, a giraffe, they could bend all the way down and drink.”

Have you ever seen the giraffe from the zoo and they spread their legs all the way and drink the water? They’re so tall. Not a giraffe. And anyways, it’s an octopus, spoiler alert, octopus. And there are videos on YouTube that show an octopus can get through anything that’s as big as its beak, a hole the size of its beak, so the size of a quarter.

Amy: Oh my goodness.

Bree: Yeah, it’s insane, these big octopuses, how do you say that, octopi? I have no idea.

Amy: I’m not sure, I think maybe, but yeah, I don’t know. I don’t want to say.

Bree: Anyway it’s awesome. So you show them this video, watch the octopus get out of the boat through this itty, bitty, tiny hole. It’s amazing. And then I usually have the kids print out or I’ll print out for them a picture of an octopus so that they can kind of keep a reminder for them to stay flexible. And we talk a lot about how is flexibility helpful for you? And it helps in so many aspects of people’s lives. We talk about flexibility when it comes to anxiety.

And just lots of different areas but goal setting is huge because the thing is, we don’t always know the how to completing our goal. We might have our goal, but we don’t usually know exactly how it’s going to work to get there. So we just need to be a little bit flexible on the how, so yeah.

Amy: Okay, so many good nuggets today. I can’t wait for people to hear this and be able to use it this year. I’ve been taking notes. I’ve got, yeah, my little paper going on over here. Thank you for coming back and sharing this with us today.

Bree: You’re welcome.

Amy: And we will include a link to your website on the show notes, but do you just want to tell people really quick where they can find you if they would like to work with you?

Bree: For sure, yeah. My website is Breenelson.com and my Instagram is @Breenelsoncoaching. I would love to see you.

Amy: Amazing. Thank you so much, Bree.

Bree: Thanks Amy. It’s been awesome. Thanks for having me.

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Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website planningplaytime.com. See you next week.