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! Welcome to the Purpose Driven Mom show. Today I’m talking about a quick monthly goal check in that you can do to make your goals feel more real, to help make progress on them, and one that you can do in just 15 minutes.

Cara Harvey 00:00:58 Before we start, though, I wanted to share one of my goals, which is less caffeine. I’ve been sharing over on my Instagram that I’ve been working with the company Magic Mind. They reached out to see if I would try their new gummies and their shots to help with my caffeine intake, and also as a perimenopausal person, all of those hormonal things that we need. So I’ve been trying their mental gummies. They’ve got a shot, they’ve got a gummy. And I wanted to tell you that it has gotten me down to two, and on some days only one cup of coffee a day, which, you know, you might be like, all right, listen, Kara, I barely drink that much. That’s too much caffeine anyway. But for me, I was drinking Celsius 2 to 3 times a week, pre-workout every single day. Three cups of coffee a day. It was bad. And I was excited to try this because I wanted something that was going to help me caffeinate without feeling like my heart was going to burst, because I really felt this anxiety driven addiction to the caffeine.

Cara Harvey 00:01:49 I’ve been using this and it has helped me feel so much more clear. I’m actually more productive, which I did not think it was possible. And I love that it is safe for adults and for kids. You can also have kids eight and older. Take it because there’s no caffeine in the gummies. Now the shots I also have been taking those have caffeine. You don’t want to give those to the kiddos, but if you want to try them, you can go to a purpose driven romcom slash magic mind. There’s a code PDM mom 25 for a discount. I really recommend them. They’ve got the good mushrooms and all the things that are natural, good for your body and they give you a nice little energy kick without the crash after. So go to a purpose driven romcom slash magic mind, you can get yours. And now I want you to check out this episode where we’re going to be talking about how do you check in on your goals. So I told you about one of my goals, which was less caffeine.

Cara Harvey 00:02:36 I want you to tell me about one of yours, so feel free to send me a DM. I’m over at a Purpose Driven Mom and let me know how your goals are going. Welcome, welcome! I wanted to do a quick live because we are getting to the end of the quarter, and because we’re at the end of the quarter, that means we should probably check in on our goals last Monday. Was it last Monday? Yeah. Last Monday, the Purpose Driven Mom club I went through and kind of taught my new process for like a big goal check in that I do recommend you do once a month. And I’m going to give you some of the steps here so that you can get them together for the end of this quarter. All right. I’m also going to put this on the podcast. So this will be coming out in March right at the end of the quarter. So it is perfect for you. And this is going to be episode 451. So if you’re watching later show notes or the Purpose Driven RomComs podcast for 51, let’s talk about it.

Cara Harvey 00:03:22 Why do we need to check in on our goals? One of the things I realized last year was that I was making all of these goals, and I wasn’t checking in on them consistently. I would have these goals. I would track them each week, but then all of a sudden we’d get to the next month and I’d forget the yearly goals. Like I’d sort of glance at them. They sort of existed, but I just never actually did anything with them. And what I realized was missing in my entire plan, and it was pointed out to me by one of the club members, was like, I’m just missing this piece. Was this. It was the yearly Check-In. How do we check in with our goals that we set the ones that we add? Sometimes I’ll make a goal in January that I don’t want to work on till May or in February, or goal gets added and then it doesn’t get added to my big chart. Like, how do we keep it all concise and ready to go? Okay, so here are the steps.

Cara Harvey 00:04:07 The first thing I recommend. And again, this is every single month. But especially now that we’re getting to the end of the quarter, you’re going to want to make sure you do this for the quarter at least. Right is I want you to look back at any visions or mission statements that you might have written for the year. Now, I keep mine in Trello, and then I also keep them on a workbook that we use for the club, because we’ll do planning once a month. And I want you to reread them. One of the club members, when we did this, she had a suggestion of like printing it out, and I loved that. So I have since printed it out. My family vision and my work vision. My family vision is on my fridge so that I can see it every single day, and my work vision is taped here to my desk so that when I sit down to work, I’m reminded of that. Now, why do we do this piece if we’re not looking back at the things we said we wanted to do? If we’re always just looking forward at the next goal and the next goal, we’re not going to be very anchored in that vision.

Cara Harvey 00:04:56 I really recommend at least once a month, the quarter or daily. You’re reading this mission statement. You’re looking at it, you’re checking it out. You’re saying, okay, is this something I want to do? What did I say I wanted to do? What did I want it to look like? Who is the person I wanted to be? Once you get there, you really can start to filter through some goals to say, hey, is this goal going to move me towards being the person I want to be? Or is is not looking at this keeping me stuck? By looking at your vision statement, you also are going to get excited about the goal again, and your brain is going to just open up the possibilities. It’s that concept of the white car, right? Like I wanted a white use SUV. I’ve decided I’m buying it. So now everywhere I go, do you know what I see? It’s a white SUV, right? And I think it’s so important that you are doing this for your brain.

Cara Harvey 00:05:41 You’re opening your brain up. You’re saying, this is where I want to go, this is where I want things to be. And the more that I read it and I’m not too woo, I’m not, you know, into too much like manifesting like all that kind of stuff. But I do believe in the power of this. I believe that if you say it out loud and you start reading it every single day, you can become this person. So by going back and saying, this is the the mission, this is my vision statement for the year. And just reading it, you’re reawakening your brain to your goals. If you’ve not written one for the year, today’s a great day to do it. It doesn’t have to be long. Mine is literally four sentences. Actually. Let me see if I can pull mine up really quick because I’m on the computer and I can read it to you. Just to give you kind of an example of my personal mission statement. And again, it’s not super succinct.

Cara Harvey 00:06:24 It’s not the best selling novel. It was just this is what I wrote at the end of 2024 of how I wanted my personal and my family to feel ready. So mine is 2024 has showed me how much our family thrives with time together. I want us to continue that into the new year. While we might not be able to do our complete year of carving, so time out. We were talking about getting a trailer and just hitting the road for the whole year. We’re not doing that. I still want to make sure that we are planning time outside hikes, camping trips, and we are having more time unplugged. It is important to get back to date nights with my husband, and I want to make sure that we were making a concerted effort to get off our phones and connected more as a family. I want this to be the year that we also get our family’s finances in better order, more in savings, paying off debt and investing 40. I turned 40, by the way, this year 40 was a good year for me.

Cara Harvey 00:07:11 I’m ready to continue growing in confidence. I want to work to get another life coach certification to keep growing myself, get back to therapy, get back to church. I want to take my health in my own hands, and I want to have more time off my phone and pick up my books and my crafts. So see how it’s nothing revolutionary. It’s nothing super life changing. But reading that inspires me to be like, right as I pick up my phone, right as my kids are like, let’s play another game. And I’m like, oh, I don’t want to do it right. It’s that reminder of no, no, no. When you dreamed of your year, these are the things you said you wanted to do. These are the places, the person you want it to be. So write yourself a mission statement, reread it, keep it for from. The second thing you’re going to do is if you have a vision board is to just give it a glance. The vision board is your pulse check.

Cara Harvey 00:07:54 It’s your feeling. It’s this is how I said I wanted to feel when the year started. Do I still feel that way? Am I still excited about these things? This is another one I recommend you print out. So I teach a concept of how to make them on Canva, where you go through and you can add things to it. Go ahead and make yours on Canva. Go get some magazines, print them out right, and I want you to look at it. Have it as the phone screen, the wallpaper, put it on your computer, put it where you can see it. The more your brain can get on board with the vision that you said, the more attainable your goals become. So those are two very fast things you can do to just check in and say, how is the year going now the next piece is looking back at my year plan. So I have a secondary doc and I just call it check ins. So my goal check ins and I’m going to walk you through what’s the kind of on my doc I’ve set it up for the entire year.

Cara Harvey 00:08:45 If you’re in the Facebook group, what I’m going to do and I’ll also I’ll put this in the show notes at the podcast the Purpose Driven mom.com/podcast for 51. I made a quarter one goal check in for the club. I’m just going to share it with you. So this way all you have to do is hit file, make a copy, and you can see this template that I’m talking about. And you can feel free to do your own at the same time. Okay. So I’ll, you know, I’ll put all of those there for you. So here’s what’s on my goal year plan checking list. It has each of the areas and the categories I have goals in, from health to finance, spirituality, personal, home, relationships, growth, and family. Does not of my work stuff on here. I do that separately and under each one I have a section where I can put what the goal is and a little vision sentence. So not a full statement, but maybe just like a sentence of what do I want? Why do I want this? What do I want it to feel? All right then underneath it I have January, February and March and what I’ve been doing every single month.

Cara Harvey 00:09:41 So again, you could just do this for the quarter. But I’ve been doing this every single month is I just go in and I give an anecdotal how’s it going? So one of my goals this year was to make more things that are homemade. And so I checked in in January. So my health, I had a goal of just cleaning up our family’s nutrition. So the vision for this was I want to cook more. I want to expose the kids to more foods. I want to have dinner together and I want to use less processed ingredients. That’s what I really want, right? I want our nutrition to be better. So my quarter one goal was that we focused on dinner. There’s a bunch of things I could focus on with lunches and breakfast. I was like, I just want to think about like the dinner meals. So I wrote on this sheet. It’s got my January plan, which my January planned for this was I was going to like make one. I call it like a casserole, but like one.

Cara Harvey 00:10:22 Yeah, a casserole dish every single week from scratch type of thing. One scratch meal that we reheat, we made a January family goal of everyone has a fruit or a vegetable at every meal or February goal was that I eliminated buying foods with like red dies. Now listen, Valentine’s Day happen. My kid had a pixie stick like it happened, but looked at the things I was buying on the regular, the stuff from the grocery store, and I made a very concerted effort of no, I’m not going to put the like, buy those things. So we did pretty good on that. And then my March 1st is working on the evening, so my kids will eat dinner and then stop five minutes later and then say, I want dessert. And I’m like, no, you need to like learn about eating times and like it’s okay to be hungry for like a smidge. So now we’re working on after dinner. They have to wait 90 minutes. That’s all we’re working right now. So. And we did it early.

Cara Harvey 00:11:09 So if we’re done by like 530 that’s seven. They can have their snack. They don’t need to go right to the kitchen. So just we’re working on those types of things. So anyway so I have the plan here. I also have on here for this example the food. So one of my other goals was replacing one of my foods with a homemade option per week. So every month when I checked in I wrote down, so do you want to hear my list? I’ll share with you. So in January I made chocolate chip cookies, ice cream and chocolate syrup, bread and chick fil A sauce. And those are no longer things I am purchasing, she says urgently. In February, I made waffles, pickles, pizza crust and bagels. I will no longer be buying those things except for the pickles. I cannot find a recipe my kids will eat. I like the pickles that I made. My kids were a little pickier, so we’ll see how that goes. March. My plan is banana bread, which I made last night.

Cara Harvey 00:11:52 I’m going to write that down. Muffins, brownies. And I need one more. Oh ranch dressing I forgot. So those are the things we just ran out of ranch dressing. So I’m like, I’m just gonna learn how to make it. And so I’m just kind of making this plan. So what’s great about this is that because I do it monthly, all I have to do is kind of go over to this list, check in, make a little note of how it’s going, and remind myself, like what? You know, what’s going on and what I’m doing there. Let’s stop and pause so that I can invite you to the 2025 Purpose Driven Mom Summit. It’s here. Our eighth annual event will be kicking off on April 7th, and the only thing missing is you go to a Purpose Driven mom. Com slash summit 2025 link is up in the show. Notes to come join 25 presenters to help you have your day your way. We’re going to help you make a plan for your day.

Cara Harvey 00:12:37 That’s not going to help you feeling super overwhelmed. And the best part? It’s free. We’re going to help you manage your life, your household, your goals, your business, all while feeling lit up about life and not feeling stuck in that day to day drudgery that a lot of us moms can feel. The eighth annual purpose of her Moms Summit will be kicking off on April the 7th, and you can get a free pass to join us and hear from some of the most incredible experts on the internet. Go now and get your ticket and we’ll see you soon. Now, the last piece of this is then tracking my goals. It’s going in and tracking my goals, and I use Trello. I like to go in and make sure everything is marked off for the quarter. You know, I said I wanted to save a certain amount of money. I said I wanted to make X amount of homemade dishes. I said I wanted to complete this project. Have I tracked these things? Have I checked in? I then take those lists from Trello and I kind of scooch them on down.

Cara Harvey 00:13:33 I move them on over and I put them next to the next month. This way my year goals are top of mind. It’s really easy for us to just keep making goals and not looking back at where we said we want it to be. So what I want to encourage you to do today in this quick tip episode is do a little check in. It’s almost the end of the quarter. Go back, look at your vision for the year. Check out any vision boards. Write a little anecdotal, like how your goals doing, and track any goals that you have completed and then ask yourself the question. Where do I want the next few weeks to go? So no matter when you’re listening to this, I want you to do this process and say, hey, beginning of March, people, my Facebook group. People. Right. I’ve got the whole month. Are there still goals on here that I want to work on? Are there still things that I’m like, I want to step into being this person? Are there things I can do to show up this way? My end of March, my Friends from the Future Again Shownotes the purpose driven romcom podcast for 51, where I’ll put a copy of this checklist as well.

Cara Harvey 00:14:29 You have a week left. Which of those things do you want to do? And then as you’re planning quarter two, because I’m hoping you’re starting to think about quarter two now as you’re planning quarter two, which of these things do you still want to take into the next quarter? Which of these things are there for you? I want you to do it. This check in right now before the month goes another day. And just ask yourself, how have things been going and where do I want to go from here? Oh yeah, at least it says I want to start making more stuff from home. Spaghetti sauce. That’s a good one I want to do. I haven’t done spaghetti sauce. I’m going to do pizza sauce next because last time we made our pizza dough. I just use jar sauce. So my next step is to make it. I have another episode coming out about the 1% more, but like that’s the thing I’m realizing. We make everything so big, and if we just said to ourselves, like, what’s one thing like, what is one thing that I could move forward on? We would get light years ahead of our goals instead of trying to do all of it all the time.

Cara Harvey 00:15:20 But I do think it starts with something like this. These are my notes, but I think it starts with this. What we’re doing and talking about right now is this big goal check in, right? Where will it go? Right? Like where do you want things to go? Where do you want the year to go again? If you’re in the Facebook group, once I’m done here, I’m going to take that list that I had given to club members last week. just hit file, make a copy. We’ll, tag you or pin it or something. So it’ll be in our free Facebook group. If you’re not in a group you’re watching on YouTube or in the future on the podcast, come over search purpose driven community. We’ve got a free group, a couple thousand mamas just doing our best and chatting about our time management, our goals in motherhood. And if you’re at the podcast, the show notes will be there and you can grab them as well. Thank you again. Again, like I said in the Facebook group, I’m trying to do one live a week, and I have a couple other posts that are kind of going up so we can talk and connect more.

Cara Harvey 00:16:06 Have a wonderful, wonderful rest your day. Internet said it was like funky at some point when I was talking, so hopefully you got the whole thing. If not, let me know and I can give you a tip. Otherwise, have a great day and thanks for hanging out so much. 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.