Cara Harvey 00:00:03 Welcome to the Purpose Driven Moms show here at A Purpose Driven Mom, we believe that it’s possible to manage your home, work on your personal goals, and grow and scale an online business. Most productivity tips out there tell you to hustle more and make you feel shame about not being motivated enough. And we’re here to dispel this myth. I’m Kara Harvey, and I am on a mission to help work at home. Moms realize that they have the power to go after their dreams, take care of themselves, and manage their home without perfectionism, guilt, or having to sacrifice their sleep. If you’re ready to shift your thinking around productivity and get some practical tips to help you manage your mom life. Toss your earbuds in while you fold the laundry. And let’s do this. All right. Hey, happy? I don’t even know what today is. Wednesday. I’m live here in the Facebook group, but we’re also going to air this episode on the podcast. So if you’re watching on YouTube or on the podcast, show notes are going to be at a Purpose Driven mom.com/podcast for 44.

Cara Harvey 00:00:59 When I’m recording this live, I think the message will be just as timely as when it airs in February, because it’s the second week of January, but it’s coming out in February when I think you’ll need it to. And I want to talk to you today about what do you do when you feel like you’ve already quit on some of the goals that you’ve perhaps set for yourself for the New year? I was reading something the other day, and it said that the second Friday of January is known as Quit Day, and it’s when most people will quit on their resolutions or their goals. And that’s fast approaching in real life. But also, I think it’s timely when this comes out in February, because right around February is also where you get that second wave. I’m really excited about my goals. These are the things that I want to get done, and then we quit again and figure I’ll just do it again next year. I want to give you a little pep talk today on what do you do if you find yourself already giving up, already quitting, already saying, I can’t do this because it’s too much, because I’m going to give you a hint.

Cara Harvey 00:01:56 I think that you probably put too much on your plate. I think that it feels too much because you put too much on your plate, and I want to show you how you can fit through your goals. Take some things off your plate right now so that you can actually make some progress. All right. Now I want you to look at the goals that you set for yourself so far this year. Start with step one, which is make a list of what you have achieved towards the goals you said you were going to work on. Now, the way that I teach goal setting is not that you work on all of your year goals in January, so you can do this if you want. If you’ve done it that way or if you’re like, all right, I’m only working on my January goals. Doesn’t matter to me how you’re looking at it, but I just want to make sure you’re looking at it strategically. So what I’m going to do is go through and look at the goals I said I was going to work on in quarter one, the goals I said I was going to work on in January.

Cara Harvey 00:02:44 Again, if you didn’t break it down this way, you might want to start with, hey, this is what I said I was going to do in 2025 so far. And I want you to start with making a list of all the things you’ve accomplished to move towards that goal, not completed it. Maybe you did. Heck. You know, maybe you’re like, I set a goal for myself to do this one thing. I did it on day one. Excellent. Wonderful. But instead, before we say the sky is falling, nothing is working. What we’re actually going to do is step back a little bit and ask ourselves, what have you already done towards the goal? Okay, so you start with the list of these are the things I’ve done towards my goal so we can celebrate. I teach a five step goal process, and the first one is really about the reflection. And that’s where we’re at now. Okay. Reflect so far. How is it going? How are things feeling? What steps did you make? You said you wanted to lose £5 this month.

Cara Harvey 00:03:35 Okay. What steps have you made towards that? You said you were going to read 12 books this year. How many pages have you read so far? And I want you to do this without judgement. I want you to do this without feeling like I didn’t read any pages so far this year, because that’s not the point of step one of reflection. Step one of reflection. The point here is actually to stop yourself and An audit. If you are auditing your goals as you’re going throughout the year, you’re going to be in a much better spot when you get later on in the year. What happens a lot is we don’t stop, we don’t reflect, we don’t audit, and then we get to December. Realize we said we were going to do this thing in either scramble and hustle and try to get it done or quit instead. Regular checkpoints is my recommendation. So what we’re doing here, this is a regular checkpoint. I know that I said that I was going to save. Okay, so one of my January goals is to add 1000 extra dollars to what we currently have in our emergency savings.

Cara Harvey 00:04:31 That was one of mine. So as I’m auditing in real time today that I’m recording this, what is it, January 8th. Right? I have asked myself what steps have I made to add to that? Well, I’ve added $100 to that emergency savings. Okay, great. Right. My goal was to finish that in January. My goal was to like push forward in January and just build that back up. So now we’re going to move to step two. Take a quick second. I invite you to join one of my new favorite apps. It’s called Brand Club. I am all about trying to get my side hustle on right. And one of the things I hate doing is taking money out of my pre-planned budget for tiny things that pop up, like the snack stand during football season, or the $10 you have to Venmo somewhere else because you need it for school. And I found Brand Club to literally fill that gap for me. Here’s what I do with it. Every single day I go in, I earn between a dollar and $1.50.

Cara Harvey 00:05:20 It takes me two minutes and I just fill in some surveys. Super simple. Very easy. I also will link it to my Amazon, my Walmart and my target account. So when I buy things anyway, I get cash back. It takes me about ten days, but I earn $10 and when I get my $10, I cash it to my Venmo Girl math. I’m using it all the places I want to share with you a $3 code to get started, because you need $10 to cash out. So let me give you $3. I’ll get $3 if you sign up. I really appreciate it. Go to a Purpose driven mom.com/brand club. Do it on your phone because it’s going to bring you up to the app so you can download it. It’s a really easy way to just get some side money going, so you don’t have to take it out of your regular budget and make some money for yourself. That’s a purpose driven, mom slash brand club. Okay, so we’ll do this finance goal for me, for example.

Cara Harvey 00:06:06 But I want you to pick, you know, a goal that you’re working on. All right. So I made that step. All right. What are some other things that maybe aren’t measurable but are anecdotal that I’ve done towards those goals? Well, you know, I put $100 in savings, which is good anecdotally or also, I mean, it could be data driven. I’ve tracked all of my expenses and savings so far this month. I know where it is. I’ve stuck to our budgets. I’ve also this isn’t about saving that extra thousand dollars, but I’ve started to put some money in investments, right? I read a book on finance. It’s the eighth, and I finished a book that I had started it before break, but I read a book on finance. Right. So see how it’s not just I said I was going to save $1,000. The only progress I’m checking in on is the thousand dollars. Right? It’s it’s not just that. Yes. You want to check in on the end goal, the outcome based goal.

Cara Harvey 00:06:53 I you know, I want to. I mean, I want personally I would like to lose £30 this year. Okay. So I do want to check on the end outcome goal. How much weight have I lost. Right. So I think I’ve lost like I don’t know, half a pound whatever since the year started. Great. So that’s my outcome based goal. But then I also want you to make a list of the other progress based goals that you’ve made towards this. What this does is reframe your brain from feeling so overwhelmed, thinking about your failures, thinking about the things you haven’t done, but instead says, okay, well, maybe I haven’t done these things, but I have done these things. Maybe I haven’t shown up in this way, but I did show up in this way and that feels really aligned. That feels really good to me. Okay, so you’re gonna start with step one. Reflection. How has it been going? What have I made progress towards in the actual outcome of completing the goal, and also the progress and the habits of showing up for the goal? Okay, now what you’re going to ask yourself.

Cara Harvey 00:07:47 And again, you can do this for each of your goals for this month or the year. I recommend you do this every single month When you’re doing kind of you’re making your goals for the next month, right? Then what I want you to do is I want you to ask yourself, all right, what’s my vision? This is step two. So what is my vision for this goal? I’m going to use the finance example throughout. This whole whole thing is a nice little one goal we’ll work on. So what is my plan. All right. So my vision for the rest of the month because again I’m if I’m recording this at the beginning of the month, I’m trying to see how I want the rest of the month to go. Maybe it’s a mid month check in, whatever. For the rest of the month. My vision is still. And again, you have to ask yourself, is the vision still what you said the vision was when you set the goal? Because the vision might change and when the vision changes and we don’t adjust our plan, that’s when we start to feel frustrated.

Cara Harvey 00:08:31 We start to feel defeated. We start to feel like we can’t do anything. We start to feel like we just really out of control. So instead of I’m keeping my vision the same, I might say, you know what? Looking at where I’ve been for the finances, paying attention to it, maybe the goal of adding the $1,000 by the end of the month isn’t the vision anymore. Maybe it’s adding $500, I don’t know, right? If I’m thinking for myself, it’s not. I’m gonna probably keep my vision the same, because I frontloaded like all of the stuff out of my first pay that we need for the month. So next pay really is quote unquote surplus for the month. Like, could it go ahead to paying February budget stuff? Yes. But I really want to put it aside for this emergency. So that might be my plan. Okay. So what’s the new vision moving forward that you have for this goal based on what you’ve accomplished so far? And again, you don’t have to do this process every week, but at least it’s helpful to do it mid-month.

Cara Harvey 00:09:23 It’s helpful definitely for your month goals, and it’s helpful to do it at the end of the month for your year goals as well. Okay, so step two is what’s the vision? Okay. So I’m going to say my vision is I’m still going to keep the goal at adding that thousand dollars. Like I really feel like even though we have whatever 20 something days left in the month, I have a plan. I feel good about it. I think we can still do it. Okay, I’m going to keep that. All right. So I’ve reflected I vision. Step three is now auditing and adjusting your plant. So now I want you to go through that goal that like you already feel starting to waffle and say based on the new vision I wrote, what is my new plan for this? How am I going to get there? This is where I’m going to adjust. So originally my plan was and my phone let me grab my calculator. So my plan was $250 a week, because a thousand divided by four is $250 a week.

Cara Harvey 00:10:14 If I add $250 a week into the pay, then it will be fine and I’ll be able to hit it. Now I’ve only added 1000, so I need to now adjust the goal for the remaining. What do we have three weeks left in the in the month? We have three weeks left in the month. Now, what I’m going to do for this then, is I’m going to change the math. I wanted to have $1,000 in my savings. I’ve only put $100 in my savings. I have 900 left to spend. I still feel confident that I can hit this goal at the end of the month. I’m still driving towards it now. I might check in next week and change it. I don’t know. And so now I need to readjust. Instead of dividing my number by four because there were originally four weeks, I’m dividing it by three. 900 divided by three is 300. So my goal went from saving $250 a week to saving $300 a week. It’s a tiny jump, right? It’s $50 more.

Cara Harvey 00:11:08 But because I’m auditing as I go, it’s going to be less of a jump than if I got to January 31st and was like, oh, I need to find $1,000 today. No, I need to find a $300, right. This upcoming week. All right. So now I’ve audited and I’ve adjusted my plan. That’s the end goal plan. That’s the outcome plan. What I also need to audit and adjust is my progress plan. So how am I going to get here? All right. Now you might have to go through for this. I might say okay, I said I was going to make X amount of dollars for me. I have a variable income. Maybe I didn’t make the money I thought I was going to make, so I might have to adjust the plan and say, okay, I’m gonna, you know, take a one on one client I’m going to do a side hustle thing. One of the things I decided that I’m going to start doing in this new year is some DoorDash and like, side hustle things to just pay off our debt and start putting more in investment, right? Like, my pay covers our bills, but I want to start getting ahead more.

Cara Harvey 00:12:04 And in order to get ahead more, I need to make more income. And I anyway, I thought about it today and I was like, you know what? My my daughter’s at practice on Wednesdays for two hours. I just got approved for it. I was like, I’m just gonna do it for two hours. Like I could go home or I could drive around and do this. So we’re going to see. I’ll report back, but okay, I’m going to pick up more hours. I’m going to cut back in this area. Right. So for me personally like for finance schools right. You have two options. You either cut back or you make more. Those are like the only like two things you can do. So what I’m also going to do is okay, how am I adjusting the plan of the how I’m going to get there? I’m actually going to make some phone calls to some of our bills. I haven’t called them in like a forever to see if we can get our like interest rates adjusted or even like our monthly payments adjusted.

Cara Harvey 00:12:48 So I’m going to call. Yesterday I made a call to my bank to get a fee waived and I was like, feel really empowered. I’m like, I can do it. So I’m really trying to think like, okay, if I save. So my thought process on that is if I save X amount of money on our monthly bill, then I could put X amount towards, you know, something else. So I might do that. I might say, okay, next week I’m going to adjust our grocery budget because I still want to hit that goal. So I this is actually what I did in real time this upcoming week was I took $50 that I had put aside for groceries. I mean, I put more than $50 aside for groceries, but whatever the amount was, I think it was like $250 I put aside for the week for groceries. I was like, I still want to make the the 50. Like, I still want to put money away. So I’m going to move the $50 directly now into my emergency savings, and I’m going to figure out how to spend $200 or whatever the math was on groceries this week.

Cara Harvey 00:13:42 It’s very I’m very capable of doing it. I just have to be intentional about it because I know me. If I keep if I say I have a $250 grocery budget for the week, I’ma spend $250. If I say I have a $200 grocery, I’m going to be a little more creative and I’ll stick under that like I need that limit. So maybe that’s the adjusting that part of the plan, right? It’s like how I’m going to get there, how I’m going to be creative about it. If you are a mom who wants to start a business and you need help and you want to go from chaos to clarity, I want you to go over to a purpose driven mom com slash business planner and get my new Ultimate Digital planner for business owners. I’ve got client profile pages, business breakdowns, promo planners, goal setting, social media, and more. You can take that overwhelm that is planning your business and get all of it in one place. You can make a binder, get your things together, and get on track with your business.

Cara Harvey 00:14:35 I’ve got 13 different planning worksheets you can choose from goal setting sheets, project planning, product planning, client profiles, financial templates, and more. Go to a to a supermom.com/business planner, and you can also get this bonus social media content pages, where there are over 20 different options for you to lay out your social media and get it done. Go to a purpose driven mom.com/business planner and grab yours today. When you do these things and not wait till the end of the month, not wait till the end of the year, you audit as you go. You’re being a student of your goals. You’re more involved in them, but also what you’re doing is you’re adjusting as you go so that it’s not this huge shock of like, oh no, I gotta get these things done right. All right. So I went through, I reflected, I did my vision, I readjusted my plan. Steps four and five of the goal process. This is accountability right. So I need some accountability. So I’m going to ask myself what accountability and supports did I put in for my goals so far for the finances I have two.

Cara Harvey 00:15:33 One is like my husband. We’ve been on a really good we’re on like a really good page about this. Like we’re really focused on this. So checking in with my husband and the other is TikTok. If you are an on TikTok, come find me. Purpose driven mom I think there’s no a. I think it’s just purpose driven mom on TikTok. I’m sharing all of my finance stuff on TikTok, like literally how much I’m spending every day. I, you know, I it was funny because I’ve been like, thinking I should use TikTok for my business, and I didn’t want to because I enjoy TikTok as a consumer. So I just decided I’m just going to use it as a consumer. Like, I’m, I’m if I want to post about businesses stuff and tips and stuff, I will because that’s part of who I am. Like my therapist asked the other day. She’s like, is the person you are at work like the same person you are? Right. Like so some of us, like, expel all this energy at work and then we come home, we’re tired or vice versa.

Cara Harvey 00:16:17 And I was like, yeah, I’m like the same. I’m. I’m talk about the same things. I’m the exact same person. So there’s, there’s a bleed for me. But I took the pressure off the business part and I was like, I’m just gonna use this like, Dear Diary, here’s what I spent today, because I love that personal accountability. I could care less if anyone sees any of those videos. It’s actually more for me. So do I have accountability? Yes. Okay. Let’s audit. Is it still working? Yes. If it’s not a just. And then your fifth step is oh incentive or reward. Now, this is something I’m realizing as I’m auditing this finance goal. I don’t have one. I did not pick an incentive or reward for myself if I put that thousand dollars in emergency savings. So I need to push myself to think of something. Now. I always recommend when you’re picking an incentive or a reward, that you don’t pick something counterintuitive. So the incentive of the reward that I pick, I don’t want it to be something that I’m going to buy.

Cara Harvey 00:17:04 I want it to be something that supports that goal. Like, you know, and again, I have other goals, right? So like my weight loss goal, if I hit my target, like I might buy myself a new pair of sneakers or something like that’s not counterintuitive to that specific goal. So I you know, I always recommend. So I actually want to challenge myself. I need to think about this. I might go to ChatGPT and ask it a little bit, but what what do we want our reward to be if we hit this thousand extra dollars in emergency savings and sometimes for rewards? For me it could be you know it. You know, it is interesting because I do want to be like, oh, I could thrift something, but it’s not about the buying right now. I do know that I have a $7 Amazon gift credit sitting in my account so I could say, okay, I’m my reward is that I’m going to spend this $7 on something for me, right? Like because I haven’t been buying as much, you know, for me, because we’re consciously spending maybe I do that because it’s not taking from my money, it’s the Amazon.

Cara Harvey 00:17:56 But it could also be for me. Like I could also be like, oh, let me girl math at some points. I have Starbucks points or, or Chick-Fil-A points and go get myself a coffee. I and as I’m thinking about it, I think if we hit this, I really would like just like to give myself like some space and time. So I think what my reward is, is like, I’m gonna take half a day off where I get to like, read and rot in my bed and like, not feel guilty or bad about it and just like, enjoy that because this is a goal me and my husband have together. We maybe we’ll make a goal of. All right, if we hit this, we’re gonna do this thing together. You know, I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. And I am now February. Nope. Today is January 8th, but this is going to come out in the podcast in February. So again, Purpose Driven Podcast 444 when this airs, if you want to watch the Check out show notes.

Cara Harvey 00:18:42 But I’m gonna think of something I actually don’t know. So I’m gonna push myself to come up with an incentive for this, because I find that when I have all five parts of the goal process working in conjunction together, my goals are more likely to be accomplished. So what I want to encourage you to do today is pick one goal that you found yourself, quote unquote, quitting on already, one goal that you’ve already been like, it’s too much, it’s too hard. I don’t want to do it. I’ll just do it Monday already. We don’t want to have that mentality. We want to have, okay, let’s be a detective. This isn’t working. How can I make it work? And then you’re going to go through the five step process. With that goal, you’re going to reflect on what you’ve done, your successes, what progress you’ve made towards the goal and what progress you’ve made showing up towards the goal. Step two you’re going to rewrite your vision for the remaining time. Like, what do you want it to look like? And I say remaining time because again, could be the year, the month, whatever.

Cara Harvey 00:19:31 You’re going to readjust your plan based on not only the tasks you have to complete, but how it gets done. You’re going to pick a accountability channel. Doesn’t have to have to be a person, but could be anything you want. But it could be. It could be one of those little there’s like that little chirp, that bird app. Right. Like you could have whatever you want for accountability. Like my Duolingo. Accountability is literally that. That little guy tells me I hit day 251 today and that is enough for me, right? So whatever it is for you, and then you’re going to come up with a reward that’s not counterintuitive to your goals. Okay. It is so early in the year. So if you haven’t even quote unquote gotten started, don’t worry. It’s a calendar. I want you to pretend and like, live your life without worrying about the date and just give yourself urgency by the end of the week. By the end of a month, you can do that. But don’t say, oh, it’s January 8th.

Cara Harvey 00:20:14 I haven’t done these things. I’m failing. Okay? It’s just a calendar. It does not matter. Just keep going. Now I’m live here in our Facebook group. You can search Purpose Driven Mom community. If you’re not in the group and you’re listening to this on YouTube or on the podcast, come here. I’m going to be doing a live every single week with some tips, and sometimes we’ll also double dip them. We’ll put them on the podcast later. I figured this was a good one to come out in February 2nd, because you’ll probably need to hear it again in February. And then again, you can check out the YouTube channel for a purpose to Vermont. We’d love to have you there. We’re going to be doing more in 2025, in YouTube. All right. Thank you so much. If you’re in the Facebook group, I do want to support you more. So I am planning on some posts where we can do some check ins. Feel free to ask questions. I would love to help.

Cara Harvey 00:20:54 Otherwise, have a wonderful day and we will chat soon. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Purpose Driven Mom Show. If this episode served you in any way, we would really appreciate it if you headed over to wherever you listen to podcast. Hit that five star and leave a review and a rating. That’s how more moms can find us and we can grow our community. If you had a tip or an Make sure you come over and tag me at a Purpose Driven Mom on Instagram and share it with your friends. The best way for us to get this message out there of less hustle and less shame and more intentionality, is for you to share it with people you know need to hear it. Thanks for listening. We appreciate you and I can’t wait to connect with you more outside of the podcast.