GG 61 | Goal Setting

Debra Eckerling – Goal Setting For Success

GG 61 | Goal Setting

 

Everyone deserves to be happy. If you are unhappy with your job and you cannot change your job, how about finding something on the side that makes you happy so the joy can leak in? Once you have your foundation and you know what you want, from the joy you have found, you can add to it. Once you figure out what you want, you can make a plan and then turn it into reality. Our guest in this episode is the Goddess of goal planning, Debra Eckerling. Debra knows all about setting goals as she coaches individuals and businesses on finding your goal, setting up a plan, and sticking to it. Listen as Karen and the Goddesses talk with her about your guide to goal setting.

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Debra Eckerling – Goal Setting For Success

Goal Guide

What’s on your list to do? I have a lot of lists. I have my planner that is filled with lists. My monthly is completely scribble-scrabble but I know what it means. I have papers and sticky pads. I have all these goals and all of these things that I want to do that I look at every day. I even have a little sticky pad right next to my computer that is my schedule every day like, “This is what I do,” to make sure that I get it all in personal, as well as professional. Sometimes it can be overwhelming and I freeze. I become paralyzed. It takes that motivation to get going and that positive reinforcement. People say, “You can do it,” and for me inside, I feel like I can as well.

What about if you don’t know what it is that you want to do? What is your goal? You don’t know and you’re floating. You’re by default doing all of these things to get to somewhere but you don’t have a clear, laid-out plan. Our guest is going to help us not only get to fine-tune what is our goal but to help us with talking about her special method, as well as her amazing little tips and tricks that will help us to walk that pathway to what it is that we want to do with success.

Debra Eckerling is the creator of The D*E*B Method system of goal setting simplified and the author of the award-winning Your Goal Guide, A Roadmap for Setting, Planning and Achieving Your Goals. In order to get what you want, you need to know what you want. As a corporate consultant and workshop leader, Debra helps executives, entrepreneurs and their teams identify their personal and professional goals, make new plans and set themselves up for success. She’s also the host of the Goal Chat Twitter chat, Goal Chat Live on Facebook and LinkedIn and The DEB Show podcast. Welcome, Deb Eckerling, to the show.

To get you want, you need to know what you want. Share on X

Thank you so much for having me. Any day, I get to talk about goals. That’s pretty much every day but it’s a good day. I’m thrilled to be here.

I want to read a few quotes from some of your clients that you had and some people that have read your books. I was amazed when I looked through the reviews of your book, all of these amazing comments. This one is from a client who has read your book, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” As appealing as that may sound, it also means you won’t get anywhere close to reaching your goals if you don’t chart your path.

To get what you want, you need to know what you want. Many people skip that. Your readers are probably in a different kind of category because they’re tuned in and they know that they have something special to offer the world. They’re a little bit atypical but most people are spinning and that’s not okay.

My children are young adults. I remember being that age as well and not quite knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up. They’re fine-tuning their goals of what they want to do. I meet other women and men my age and they’re still trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up. How do you help them to start with trying to figure out what they want and to find out what is their goal?

The first step is to choose yourself. Many people overthink and underthink their goals. They say, “This is my education so I have to continue this path. This is what my family thinks I should do.” A lot of that comes from a loving place. By the same token, your life is up to you. There are other people to consider but the first step is that choice. “I need to make a change. What does that mean?”

GG 61 | Goal Setting
Goal Setting: Your mission, your vision, what you stand for, that is who you are.

 

The D*E*B method, my system is to Determine your mission, Explore your options and Brainstorm your path. A lot of what I talk about is that D, Determine your mission because your goals can change but your mission, your vision, who you are, what you stand for, that is who you are. That’s not going to change. If you hone into what you love and what drives you but most importantly, the ways in which what you do helps others. It’s how you help whether it’s to inform, educate, through product, service or whatever. The mission that I jumped five steps ahead is who you are and what you have that is unique to offer the world to help others so they can help others.

I talked about my goal setting. Everybody deserves to be happy in some if not, all of their life. If you can’t change your day job then find something on the side that you love and that joy can leak in. Going back to answer your question, the first step is to visualize. When you think about the life you want, what does that look like? What do you have to offer the world? The mechanics, the goals can change but that vision of what you want can alter but we pretty much know. You have to give yourself permission to know.

Some people might answer and say, “I can’t quit my job. I have to do this. This is providing money for my family.” I like how you said, “Find what you love and maybe do it outside of your job. It might turn into something for your job.” Is that right?

Exactly but without the pressure. In my book, I go through the four-goal paths. I’m proud that I was able to put it into four buckets because there are many different life buckets. It’s a career job change, start or build a business, become an expert and work-life balance. That work-life balance thing, especially with many people working in hybrid and remote, it’s more important than ever because it’s a whole different tangent. If you don’t set boundaries, you don’t have that balance.

Whatever is your path, the thing on the side might just be family time, a family project, maybe it’s an Etsy store or you want to write a book. When you give yourself the gift of time to figure out things that excite you, that you want that brings you joy, that’s also going to help you because if you’re doing something on the side. Do it to enrich your life, not detract from it.

We talk about this a lot on the show, The Wizard of Oz. We’re all on this journey on the yellow brick road from another client. They said, “Debra Eckerling’s practical book helps us do that. It’s like having a dear friend walk with you each step of the way, holding your hand, guiding you along your very own yellow brick road to the life of your dreams.”

If you're doing something on the side, do it to enrich your life, not detract from it. Share on X

When I read that, I was like, “Yes,” because my mission is to help people to see that we’re all on this journey and this yellow brick road but we have all these qualities inside of us. We just need help from Glinda the Good Witch, from our munchkins and from our dog Toto to help us. As a coach myself, I know how important it is to not give your clients advice or you can offer suggestions if they’re open to it. It’s burning inside of me sometimes to say, “You should do this and this. Don’t you see it?” You have to get it from inside of them. How do you relate to this concept?

I always say that my superpower is being able to zero in on someone’s mission and motto. I talk about the mission statement and beyond that. We’re all here on this mission, not just for our own life. Some of us, like you and me, help others have more enriched, fulfilled lives. The one thing that I’m good at is I will talk to someone for twenty minutes and being like, “You love this.” They’re like, “You’re right.”

People know. It comes out in the way they present themselves and things that they get excited about when they’re talking. It’s that push-pull, “I love this. It’s not practical for me to love this.” I’m very cognizant of saying, “These are your options.” Determine your mission and explore your options didn’t mean to be that literal with my system but it’s true. Once you figure out, “My mission in life is to help as many people as possible, figure out what they want and how to get it using my systems, background experience, etc. This is my mission.”

It’s such a long phrase. That’s why the motto is important. My motto is goal-setting simplified and that embodies everything I do whether I am consulting, through my book, conversations, interviews or workshops. I’m all about making the instruction super easy. When you have that mission and your catchy motto, which can be a theme song, phrase or whatever speaks to you, it’s going to help you drive that car. It is that fuel.

When I’m speaking to the clients, it’s like, “What should I do? Where should I go?” I’m like, “You mentioned about ten minutes ago this project that you abandoned that you love. Do you know that your eyes lit up when you talked about it?” “You’re right, Deb,” which are the best words in the world. I mostly do workshops in corporate consulting. I’m doing this in groups but even watching the light bulbs, you can see when people get it. “I know my thing.” It’s almost like they need permission. I’m like, “Yes, you have it. Go for it.”

GG 61 | Goal Setting
Goal Setting: When you have that mission and your catchy motto, it’s really going to help you drive that car.

 

You need to rename yourself to be Glinda the Good Witch, telling Dorothy, “You had it in yourself all along.” You might want to think about that. Debra, we’re going to add on our Featured Goddess, Dena, to join in on this conversation. She has some questions as well for you. You can think about Glinda.

I have been referred to as goal queen, which you can’t call yourself that but if someone called me goal queen once, I feel like I am entitled to use that. I can see the merge of that but it is true. We have it but we don’t give ourselves permission. I give you all permission.

I had a question about another client that talked about you helping them reach their clarity which leads to confidence. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

That is the essence of why I talk so much about the D, Determine your mission is because it is that clarity that will draw you. It could be personal or professional and usually, it’s that little mixture. You get stuck in your head. I say you, I mean everybody. That is a huge challenge. My background is in writing communications and project management. It is going to be a surprise to no one that most of my systems are writing a brainstorming base. The reason is that we try to figure things out in our heads and we can’t. I’m sure there are 1 or 2 people who can.

It’s the same thing about when you come up with your goals. If you keep your goals in your head, they float around there. When you write them down, look at them and see the possibility, they are more likely to come true. The D is visualization, write your current and future bio to be able to see those possibilities whether it is personal, professional or both and then your mission, what you see your role in the world is. That motto is for that short snappy way to express yourself but also others because some people’s motto is also their tagline on their website like mine.

I always learn best when I hear personal stories being shared. You said you do a lot of corporate and a lot of groups but if there are 1 or 2 individuals that when they got that light bulb, they were working through, that maybe our readers would be interested in.

One of the greatest challenges as a coach is when someone says, “You're wonderful. You helped me. I don't need you anymore”. Share on X

One of the greatest challenges as a coach is when someone says, “You’re wonderful. You helped me. I don’t need you anymore.” I have many of those stories, which are a double-edged sword but wonderful. One of my favorite stories is one of my clients who came to me and said, “Deb, I’ve been trying to write my book for years and I can’t get it done.” We got it done and self-published in three months. It’s such a good example of the deadline and the accountability but more important than anything else is the plan.

We met and had a monster meeting. We figured everything out and gave little mini-deadlines. We knew when everything was going to be done by when and it got done. Especially with these little side things, maybe three months isn’t your goal. Maybe your goal is in one year or by the end of the year, it doesn’t matter. I am all about setting people up for success. I would say, “What is one accomplishment that’s going to make you happy if you get it done by the end of the year or by your next birthday or by whenever?”

This is another good story of the not-yet. This is a woman who I met when I spoke years ago. I was a guest speaker in the UCLA class. We connected because I always say you can’t reach your goals on your own. You need your people. If you’re reading and we’re not connected, please reach out on LinkedIn and drop a note. This is someone who I had met and about years later, she’s like, “Deb, I’m ready. Let’s work together. I have this book. I had a baby.” Her gift after the child was to choose herself to get this book done.

We had a couple of meetings. We have a structure and everything’s in place. We’re supposed to touch base at the end of summer and then crickets. I didn’t hear from her. Every couple of months, I’d be like, “How are you doing?” It was about 1.5 years later, I got an email from her, “Deb, thank you so much. I’m sorry. I’ve been meaning to write to you for ages. I got overwhelmed and I needed to take a break. However, what I did was I took all the things that we talked about, like giving myself creative time and stepping away from my project. I did all of the things and believe it or not, my draft is almost done. Can we do one more meeting so I have a plan to get it out into the world?”

GG 61 | Goal Setting
Goal Setting: It’s the same thing about when you come up with your goals, if you keep your goals in your head, they just kind of float around there.

 

Sometimes you have to hit the pause button. When you do that, it will not only benefit yourself but it will benefit your loved ones and your projects. It goes back to choosing yourself but also knowing yourself, what you’re capable of and when and how it makes sense to bring things out into the world. I also tell the story in the book. It’s like, “This is a good story of someone who knew she overwhelmed herself took a step back and came back stronger than ever.” Sometimes you need to do that.

My last question as a former teacher and Karen, a current teacher, we are both thrilled and love positive reinforcement so we’re both eager to know about how and why you implemented the gold stars and the colored stars system.

Way back when we used to see each other in real life, at the beginning of every workshop, I would give out the gold star stickers. I’m like, “You chose yourself today. You win.” I am all about the everybody gets a trophy. You can grow if you want, but especially with all the turmoil and the angst, we should celebrate every little thing. Choosing yourself is the first big thing. It’s not even a little bit. It’s a big thing to celebrate.

How the gold stars started is back early in my goal coach persona journey. I did events for Barnes & Noble and whenever I needed to fill my calendar, I would hang out in the cafe. A lot of the regulars knew me. One day someone came in and said, “Debra, will you start a writer support group?” I said, “If people show up, I’d love to. Let’s give it a try.” Not only was it a hit but it also started me on this journey. It was good for me because I saw the power of setting those intentions and giving yourself a deadline. I would never ask people in my groups to do anything I wasn’t prepared to do myself.

When I was asking people, it would be, “What did you accomplish? What do you need support on? What are you doing next time?” I would always set a goal for myself. At this point, I was writing spec articles. My degree was in Journalism. I was working in a bookstore and I saw symmetry. I would be writing these fun slice of life stories. This is only a little tangent. A few months into this, I met a magazine that was looking for freelancers and I had these spec articles. They took one of the ones that I wrote for fun and published it. It was where I got my first freelancing. I do what I tell people to do and it works for me so I wouldn’t work for everybody.

We should celebrate every little thing and choosing yourself is, is the first big thing. It's not even a little thing. It's a big thing to celebrate. Share on X

In this original group, one day someone said, “I achieved my goals. Where’s my gold star?” He was kidding. I didn’t think he was, so I started bringing the gold stars to the group. The way the system works is you get a gold star for achieving the specific goals but if you make progress then you can have your colored star of choice. That’s where all the stars came from. After I moved to LA and restarted the group, the stars came with me and the group has evolved over the years. It’s right online and on Facebook. It’s all about goal-setting accountability but also community because the people within this group find a connection. They need each other.

Every day, it’s a different discussion thread designed to not only give people a place to tell what they’re working on but get that positive reinforcement, not just from me but from others in the community. Every now and then, people who would know each other connect for results within the group. That’s always fun.

I love the gold star like, “Here I did it.” It’s a nice positive reinforcement, instead of saying, “What did you do? How come you didn’t finish that?” Not that you would talk to clients like that, but in our minds, we would put ourselves down. That inner critic would come up and say, “You didn’t do it. You can’t do anything.” Rewarding someone for getting even the little smidgen of something done is encouraging.

In my group, which is not just for providers, it is providers, creatives and entrepreneurs, my favorite day of the week is toot your horn Thursday because it is a place where people can talk about their wins. There’s a whole community of people who are going to be happy for them because not everybody has support in their life. This was early on in the live group I led in Santa Monica. More than once someone would come in and say, “I’m glad you’re here. My family doesn’t get me,” people who are now constantly with their families and still working from home. It’s more important than ever. I love that I have that as a forum and a place for people to go and celebrate.

When I work with clients sometimes they’ll get their work done and email me two minutes before our appointment. Having that deadline and knowing that there’s someone there waiting for their assignment or whatever, “I do this. We will talk in a few.” I would get an email and then a minute later, the phone would ring. It was my client and their time to chat. Whatever it is that you need for that motivation to get the things done, you get the things done. That’s what it’s all about. Having that platform and foundation for what you want is going to help enormously in whatever you build.

GG 61 | Goal Setting
Goal Setting: Sometimes you have to hit the pause button. And when you do that, it will not only benefit you. It will benefit your loved ones and your projects.

 

That is the key because if you don’t know then you’re flailing and trying little things or thinking, “You have to do this because society expects it or your family expects it,” and you’re like, “I don’t know if I want that.” You definitely wouldn’t be in the flow.

The other thing that’s good about the motto is it could be a personal motto. For me, I like the word harmony. That word speaks to me because it’s the balance. You need to do the want to’s, have to’s and the things you love. There are always things in there that you have to do whether you like them or not but finding that balance is the key. You need to know what that balance is. You’re never going to find that out unless you give yourself the gift of time to explore the things that you love both personally and professionally. Do more of what you love to lift yourself up because that’s going to help when you have to do the things that you don’t love so much.

On a personal note, when I have to do the laundry, I set a timer for twenty minutes. Even having that timer, I crank it out and then when the timer goes off, I stop. If I’m finished, great. If I’m not, it’s like, “That’s it. I’ll do it again tomorrow.” Holding that accountability of the time. It is a personal thing but that helps me too. I can see how accountability help. They sign up with you, talk to you and it’s like, “I’m going to get this done.”

As my practice has evolved over the years, I’m the foundation. I am the first person. I’ve had people do this too. They’d come to me. I’m meeting with a coach specifically for the business I want to build but I need to know what that is first. Those are the types of clients that I like working with and that’s why I like doing the workshops because then I get to help a lot of people at the same time with that foundation because once you have it, you can build it. Even now, what I’m doing a lot of is corporate consulting. I’m going into companies. It’s like a well-being initiative. I will find teams that are struggling and bring them through The D*E*B Method so their team leaders, directors or managers can get a sense of what it is they want.

Much has changed in 2020 and because of all the remote work, they’re not necessarily going to know the skills that their team members acquired. They can use it within their business and maybe even the people on the teams don’t know. I’m good at honing people because it’s all about finding that win-win situation.

Having a platform for what you want is going to help enormously in whatever you build. Share on X

For people, if you’re working a job, you should love your job. It might not be your thing forever but if you can enjoy your job and do the things that you love within your job, it won’t feel like work. Maybe it’s not your forever thing but it could be your for-right-now thing. As long as it’s your for-right-now thing, give it your gusto, learn a lot and it could grow into something even better for you. You don’t know. Having that awareness of what you love and what you do well and being able to bring that into whatever part of your life are there, which are all of them are going to help the wholeness of you.

I do want to also share with you and our readers that I was a guest on your Goal Chat Live, which was so much fun because we talked about fun.

You were part of the fun conversation of fun.

To people reading who don’t know what that means, Goal Chat Live, can you explain what that is like? How did you develop that? How that platform has helped you to reach others and help them achieve their goals?

I’ve already talked about my Facebook group, which I adore. That was my first social platform. Several years ago, I decided I wanted to start a Twitter chat called @GoalChat. I love that I can look back. I had the profile name for Goal Chat for years before I even started it. At the beginning of 2018, I’m like, “This is it. This is the year I start my Goal Chat.”

Having a sense of things, that was also the year that I rebranded myself as The D*E*B Method. In January of 2018, I said, “I’m going to do office hours on Twitter.” That lasted two weeks because I had such good activity. I’m like, “It’s got to be an actual chat.” Every Sunday at 7:00 PM Pacific, on Twitter, I host Goal Chat. It starts out with, “What was your biggest win last week?”

GG 61 | Goal Setting
Goal Setting: There are always things in there that you have to do, whether you like them or not, but it’s finding that balance is really the key, but you need to know what that balance is.

 

We also added a sub-question about how you did on your health, fitness and well-being goals or something of that nature. We go into what are your goals for the week. From there, we dive into the topic of the week. Once a month it’s, “What was your biggest one last month?” “What are your personal and professional goals for the month?”

The rest of the time, we dive into a specific topic. You were a guest on the Fun Conversation because my August theme was fun. Every Monday at 4:00 PM Pacific, I do a live show that streams to Facebook and LinkedIn, where I bring in three guests, usually from different parts of my life, to have a conversation on a topic.

My other topics in August 2021 were fitness, food and imagination. That was the Twitter chat topic on Sunday night. On Monday, I brought in specific guests for that. A week later, my live shows became a podcast known as The DEB Show. What I do is I merge three forms of online motivation so we’ve got the Twitter chat, the video conversation and it goes into a podcast. My goal is to be the first person people think of when they hear the word goal. The way to do goals right is to figure out what you want, make a plan and turn it into reality.

A lot of people only think of the end result. A lot of people, coaches and experts in this realm only talk about the end result. Yes, I want you to have the end result but you’re only going to have the end result if you start with a proper foundation. In this mission to change goal culture, I want to be in as many places as possible.

For us, exploring fun might inspire others to look at their lives and say, “What’s fun for me? What do I do in my life that’s fun? What do I do in my life that’s fitness-related or all the other areas? That might be my foundation.”

The way to do goals right is to figure out what you want, make a plan and turn it into reality. Share on X

That’s a good way to put it. I didn’t even think about it that way. The purpose of the conversations is to inspire and motivate people because there are so many possibilities out there. You can try a different fun thing every week until you feel you get to the thing you love or make a list of ten things that you think would be fun or listen to the podcast. At the end of every episode, I ask my guests to gift goals to the audience, to give them ideas of things to explore.

My gift was to trust yourself. I was telling your viewers to look inside and trust your intuition. I loved being able to gift to people what I thought helped me.

That’s the thing. Everybody’s journey and story are different. Everybody is going to find something different and unique to do, which is great because that means that everybody’s going to come up with something different and unique and fun to offer the world. Everything I do is about motivating people and spreading the word that, “You can have a life that you love, make the choice, do even little things. It’s going to make a tremendous difference. You can do big things that will make a big difference as well.”

The other thing I talk about a lot is I want people to look at it when setting goals and figuring out the tasks and the benchmarks that need to be met to achieve them to look at your life so you can set realistic goals and realistic expectations. If you’re working a full-time job and you want to write a nonfiction book to explore your expertise in a month, that’s not going to happen if you’re working 60-hour weeks and you want family time.

A lot of people take on those gigantic goals that they are like, “I need to be motivated.” It’s not realistic in your life and what you do every day.

GG 61 | Goal Setting
Goal Setting: If you’re working a job, you should love your job. It might not be your thing forever, but if you can enjoy your job and do the things that you love within your job, it won’t feel like work.

 

It’s all about setting yourself up for success. I had been leading these goal groups, first in Chicago and in LA. People said, “Deb, you’re good at this. Can I hire you? Will you speak at my conference?” That’s how I developed from this fun side thing I did to incorporate it as part of my career. About years ago, my main communications client was going away.

I took this as an omen to fully step into the thing that I was meant to do, which was to help people pick out the life they want so they can make a plan to turn it into reality. I named my system The D*E*B Method, which determines your mission, explores your options and brainstorms your path. It’s what I’ve been teaching and leading workshops on for years. Fortunately, it worked well with my name.

This was spring 2018. I started a new website, new socials, the whole everything and I was going to sell and publish my book on The D*E*B Method. I met an agent and he said, “Send me your book proposal. Let me get it out to the world.” At the end of 2018, my publisher showed interest and my book came out in January 2020. This book, which was designed to help people embrace change by choice or circumstance, came out about six weeks before the entire world had to embrace change by circumstance.

The purpose of what I do in my book and my workshops is to tell people that you can have the life you want. Maybe it’s part of your life, the thing that you love, maybe it’s your whole career. You need to take those steps to figure out those things in order to turn it into reality. That is what I do and how I got here.

I’m going to turn the table to you. What are your goals? What are your future plans for yourself? How do you plan on achieving them as well as holding yourself accountable looking forward?

Everybody's journey is different. Everybody's story is different. Everybody's going to find something different and unique to do. Share on X

One of my goals is to be the first person people think of when they hear the word goal. Most people in the goal space are men, which is not okay. On the one side, it gets to be me but on the other side, it has to be me. In my system, the way that I work with people, the foundational approach has either been good for people, bad or somewhere in the middle. By everybody having to hit the pause button, it has been a gift to step back and say, “Look at my life. Do I like it? Great. Do I not like it? What do I need to do to incorporate it?”

I spent 2020 telling people, “It’s okay. This is a gift. Use the time to explore it.” Fortunately, it has this wonderful guidebook that can take people through the steps. I hate the word pivot. I realized that as hard of a time as people were hitting the pause button, it’s been even more challenging for people to reintegrate into what I call the next normal because our normals are changing every week and every month.

What I’m doing now is working with companies to help managers, executives and team leaders keep their employees engaged and productive by supporting their personal and professional goals. I’m going into companies that are having these terrible employee retention problems and working with their teams to bring out what their teams want. Whether they’re looking for growth within the company, they want more responsibility, they learn things and they should be in a different department or maybe they discovered how much they like having the balance part of work-life balance. These employees will stay with you. Don’t bother them on the weekends and they will be loyal forever. It’s to bring out what it is their employees need to keep them with the company.

Happy employees are more productive, loyal and they make the company money, which is what they want. My goal beyond me is to reimagine goal culture in the workplace because I believe the companies that take the time to see the big picture not only their goals and the company’s goals but the goals of their people. Those are the companies that are going to be thriving into the future. That is my goal.

How can our readers contact you, Deb?

GG 61 | Goal Setting
Goal Setting: You can have the life you want, maybe it’s part of your life, the thing that you love, maybe it’s your whole career, but you really need to take those steps to figure out those things in order to turn it into reality.

 

You can go to TheDebMethod.com or TheDebMethod.com/keep, which is all about my program to keep employees engaged and productive. Please find me on LinkedIn and say that you saw me here. Everybody’s welcome at Goal Chat and Goal Chat Live to subscribe to The DEB Show. Reach out and connect with me or email [email protected].

You are definitely the goddess of goal setting. Thank you for joining us on Grateful Goddesses. Enjoy your day and I hope everyone knows what their goals are. Reach out to Deb if they don’t, we’ll strive towards your yellow brick road to achieving them.

Thank you for having me. You can grab a copy of Your Goal Guide at Amazon or your favorite place to buy books. If you have a book club, group or organization that brings in speakers. I don’t just work with companies.

That’s a good idea. Have it as your book club book and you can speak at it. I might do that.

Any way that I can help you and your people get to where you need to go. Please reach out. Thank you so much.

Thank you for joining us.

Welcome, everyone to Grateful Goddesses with our guest, Debra Eckerling. She talked about her book, Your Goal Guide, as well as The D*E*B Method. We’re going around and doing our adult show and tell. Dena, what did you bring along to share with us?

I brought along this aromatic mist that I got to create myself, which came from my loving goddess group as a birthday gift. I am loving it. It’s a local store here in Chicago. You go, play with these oils and pick out what smells delicious to you. You take it home and you enjoy it all throughout your home. I love this. Karen and my girls, thank you.

I’m glad you love it because Dena is the goddess of scents. She brings along scented candles often. She was able to create her own scent, which I love. I did show this at the beginning. It is one of my favorite things, but Deb, I’m going to need help from you to fine-tune this because you can see if I drop it, it’s like, “Oh no.” I did leave this once at a store. I was shopping and I left it on the counter. I went home and I’m like, “Oh my god.” I ran back. Thank God that it was still sitting there because it’s my life.

I don’t like using a phone. I don’t like the little dots. I don’t know what they mean. I like looking at the month at a glance. My month looks like a mess but I understand it. I like looking at my week and add sticky pads. It keeps me on track. This is one of my favorite things but we might need to talk because I’m sure you have some suggestions about that. It makes me happy when I look at it every day.

Give yourself a gift of time to really explore the things that you love both personally and professionally, and do more of what you love to lift yourself up. Share on X

I’ve started to create a more spiritual type of list too, where instead of writing my to-do list or what one of my guests, Taylor Morrison said, “To write get to-do list,” because we are also fortunate we get to do these things. I write, workout, do the goddess work, but I also am writing more spiritual things down there like, “Make sure to take ten minutes to meditate, breathe, stop, rest,” so I remind myself of those things. That’s one of my favorite things. Debra, what did you bring along?

Can I comment on your passing before I talk about my favorite thing? This is great because I don’t have to say that to-do list is my favorite thing because you did. I get to cheat and add a different one. I love that you have that. Notebooks, planners or whatever physical piece to organize your life is absolutely perfect. The one thing that I would suggest or modify is to maybe have one goddess notebook, one for work and one for personal. I always have three going at one time. One of them is for the passion projects I am working on, another for my clients and another is strictly my to-do list.

I need to know what I am doing for the goddess work, for my coaching and for my personal. If I have three different things, it will conflict.

What I’m saying is to keep the calendar of everything together, but I have a separate notebook for work, for each of the different incarnations of you. My to-do list is on here but I also keep one on my computer. I will brainstorm everything that needs to get done. Usually, it’s the beginning of the week, usually it’s right before my Goal Chat Twitter chat because I know that I’m going to have to tell people. I divide my list out by category. It’s client, personal, bookwork, future work and media. They’re different things. I will type it into my computer because that way, my list is wherever I am.

This story was a lot better years ago and left the house, had meetings in places or whatever. It still works because I like having it in more than one place. I will use check marks on my to-do list, write DONE on my electronics, copy and paste it into the following week. Delete the DONEs, add new things and keep the ongoings. That other reason to do an electronic version is for the purpose of tracking because this way, when you’re like, “It’s taking forever. I cannot get my passion off the ground. What is wrong with me?” You can look at your notebook or your calendar and be like, “I did this and this. I’m doing pretty good.”

Give yourself a gold star. Show us your favorite thing.

My favorite thing is a journal. Whether it’s an electronic journal or paper journal, I don’t care. If you’re having trouble figuring out the life you want, project or your next step, a journal is the most powerful tool at your disposal. I have this technique I call directed journaling and it’s simple. You scheduled 3, 4 or 5 fifteen-minute appointments with yourself. During that time, I want you to brainstorm, free write or whatever the answer to a question is.

“I need to have more fun. What am I going to do for fun? I can do this, this and this. I want to write something or create a new project that expresses my expertise. I could do a podcast. I could do a web show. I could write a book. I could start a course.” The idea is to do 3, 4, 5 of these sessions and don’t read them until after you’ve completed the exercise. You can go back and read through and find the common themes because the things that you’ve written about 3, 4, 5, 10, 20 times are going to have a common theme. You might have thought that you wanted to do one thing but you only wrote about it twice rather than something else.

GG 61 | Goal Setting
Goal Setting: The companies that really take the time to see the big picture, not only their goals and the company’s goals, but the goals of their people, those are the companies that are going to be thriving into the future.

 

How I came up with the Goddess was through my journal. It’s funny that you said that because I kept looking. I looked back at a year of journaling and it was, “I enjoy helping people. I’ve learned all these things myself. I want to help others to tap in. How am I going to do that?”

Mine is the turbo for problem-solving. It goes back to what I was talking about before. We can’t figure everything out in our heads when we write it down and take an objective look and see the common threads. It’s easier to tap into the things that we love and make a plan to move forward.

That is definitely what we all want in our life. Thank you for joining us and for sharing all your tips. I hope people reach out to you and I know they will because they do want that gold star. Enjoy your day. Thank you for joining us on the show, Deb.

Thank you.

 

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About Debra Eckerling

GG 61 | Goal SettingDebra Eckerling is the creator of The DEB Method system of goal-setting simplified and author of the award-winning “Your Goal Guide: A Roadmap for Setting, Planning, and Achieving Your Goals.” To get what you want, you need to know. A corporate consultant and workshop leader, Debra helps executives, entrepreneurs. and their teams identify their personal and professional goals, make new plans, and set themselves up for success. She is also the host of the #GoalChat Twitter Chat, #GoalChatLive on Facebook and LinkedIn, and The DEB Show podcast. Learn more at TheDEBMethod.com, follow @TheDEBMethod on social media, and reach out to [email protected]