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All right, welcome back or welcome to the Pursuit of Calling podcast, where my goal

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and purpose is to provide you with the strategies and tools needed to successfully discover

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and pursue your God-given calling.

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I'm your host, Thomas Kearney, and today we're talking about small wins.

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Okay so whenever I was a little bit more physically able, and maybe one day I'll be able to do

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this again, I would go on runs in my own neighborhood, and I would go maybe a few days a week, and

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the hardest part of my run was when I would get about to the halfway point, which is like

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the furthest point from my home, and I would start to get intimidated by how much distance

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I had to get from where I was to where I wanted to be, which was at home.

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And I decided what I ended up doing was breaking that up into small bite-sized pieces, breaking

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that big goal into something small.

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I think you can already get where we're going.

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So what I would do, I would look at, for instance, every mailbox.

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I would look at the closest mailbox right in front of me, and in my head it would be

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like, okay, I just got to get to that mailbox.

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Then I pass that mailbox, and that's a win.

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Then look at the next one, I just got to get to that mailbox.

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That's a win.

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I would take two or three mailboxes down, and I was like, I just got to get to that

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mailbox.

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Then if I can do that, I can do the next one too.

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So I just keep running to the next mailbox, and I keep doing that, doing that, and doing

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that the whole way home.

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And before I know it, I'm home.

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And the time it took to get from where I was to where I wanted to be, one, didn't seem

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like it took as long, but it also caused me to endure the journey longer, since I wasn't

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just sitting there intimidated by how long I still had to go to get from where I was

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to where I wanted to be.

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So you guessed it already, we're talking about small wins.

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I guess you didn't have to guess because I said it in the intro, but small wins are

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extremely important when you're pursuing your calling.

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And what we're going to be talking about today is about how to get them set up in order for

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them to be productive, realistic, and measurable.

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This concept can be translated to pretty much any goal that you have in any area of your

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life.

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It can be financial, personal growth, relationships, career, and all of those wrap up into the

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goals you have for your calling.

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Another word for a small win is a milestone.

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You might've heard that one before.

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I like how George Campbell puts it for paying off debt using the Ramsey Solution Debt Snowball.

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He says this, he says, the quick wins you get with a debt snowball help you to believe

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you can actually pay off your debt.

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And if you believe it, you'll start behaving like it.

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Now, one, what is a debt snowball?

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And what does he mean by if you believe it, you're going to start behaving like it?

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Why is that important to what we're talking about here?

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Let me explain.

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So you're paying off, the debt snowball is this.

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You pay off the smallest debt first.

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A lot of people disagree with that, but I did it and it makes a lot of sense.

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You pay off the smallest debt first.

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You get that quick win and then you gain financial in this instance and mental momentum to hit

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the next larger debt harder than you did for the last one.

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Now how does this apply?

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Let me explain.

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So you get that part where the quick win gave you momentum.

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It gave you that, not just validation, but it gave you the satisfaction, this knowledge

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that yeah, I can do this.

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Yeah, I can do this thing.

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This is I can pay off this debt, which means I can pay off the next one.

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Instead of looking at all the debt you have all chunked together into one pot, being like,

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wow, I have $100,000 of debt left.

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You're like, wow, that's intimidating.

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Or you just take the smallest debt, which maybe is like a medical bill of a few thousand

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dollars.

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You're like, okay, I got that one.

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So with what we're talking about, small wins is the same thing.

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Same idea.

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Every time I hit a mailbox when I was running, it gave me that mental fortitude to go to

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the next one.

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So now let's dive into making these small wins, these milestones, productive.

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And all it means to make it productive is making sure that the milestones you're setting

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are actually going to get you closer to your ultimate goal.

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For instance, I have this in my notes.

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If you want to write a book, what would a good first milestone be?

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It could be as simple as start writing.

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Maybe you didn't start yet.

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And maybe it won't be any good, but the point is to start.

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Or reaching out to maybe, maybe it's reaching out to someone that is ahead of you of where

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you are and learning some things that you don't know.

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Maybe you have a certain list of specific things that you want to learn.

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You know somebody that can help you out, or you figure out who you can ask and then ask

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them and reach out to them and hook up with them and then learn the things that you're

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looking to learn.

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Maybe that would be a win too.

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To get you closer from where you are, to not having the knowledge, to having the knowledge,

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to get you closer to writing the actual book.

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And you didn't see me, but I just made a motion that was like, duh.

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But it's not actually as obvious.

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I shouldn't do that.

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And I also want you to remember that productivity, it does not equal being busy and it does not

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equal perfection.

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No, you want to make sure that you're not just making yourself busy in order to feel

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productive.

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You don't want to try to do five different things, try to hit all these five different

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small wins all at once just to make yourself busy, just to make yourself feel like you're

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being productive and getting closer to your goal because realistically you might not be

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in that instance.

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The point of these milestones is that you work on one at a time.

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So they incrementally will grow.

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Just like when paying off your debt, it makes way more sense to pay off one first and pay

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off the next one to pay off the next one because your financial power will ramp up as you go.

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So then I also want to go back to perfection.

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Perfection is a myth.

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You're going to mess up and your goals most likely will change.

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But if you're going from where you are to where you want to be, like I said earlier

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about writing a book, you need a start.

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You just need a start.

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You're going to mess up.

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Your goals are going to mess up.

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You're going to learn from your mistakes.

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But the point is to start.

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And maybe you'll have some more milestones along the way that you didn't see before.

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That's okay.

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Okay.

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But you want to be realistic.

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We just want to make sure that the milestones or the small wins that you're setting can

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actually be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time.

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Or at all, actually.

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We want to make sure that you're actually able to accomplish these goals.

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I like how John Maxwell says in his book, 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, he says, there's

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a difference between having a dream that propels you to achieve and pulling an idea out of

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thin air that has no connection with who you are and what you can actually do.

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You must have some kind of criteria for knowing if the desire you have matches the abilities

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you possess.

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Do you have the abilities?

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Do you actually want to do all that it will take to even do the smaller part of the bigger

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goal?

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Because the answer is no to either of those questions.

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You may need to do some introspective work.

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And I highly recommend getting the 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth.

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Put that link into the description so you can pick that up for yourself.

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It's not a promo code.

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It's just, I really love the book.

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I want to go back to say, I want to reiterate what John said.

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He said, you must have some kind of criteria for knowing if the desire you have matches

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the abilities you possess.

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Maybe you're the small win that you need.

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If you're not able to do this small win, maybe your big goal needs to change.

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But then, but like if you're, if you get to come to that point where you're like, man,

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this small win maybe isn't realistic right now, but all these other ones are.

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For instance, this could be true too.

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Maybe with a small milestone I set isn't realistic.

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Maybe I'm not actually, don't have the ability to do it.

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And maybe you can actually gain that ability.

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Maybe this milestone is actually one that you set further down the line and there's

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some steps that you have to do before that.

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Let's make sure you're staying realistic.

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And finally, like I said, your goals need to be measurable.

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Your wins, your small wins, your milestones need to be measurable.

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How you know when you've actually accomplished your goal.

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I recommend each, like I said, I recommend each one being measurable.

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For instance, for me last week, I decided I was going to reach out to people and get

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two coaching clients to coach for free.

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And this week I'm doing the same thing.

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I'm reaching out to people and my goal is to get two more coaching clients for free.

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And I'm pretty sure I already got one.

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So we might ramp that up to three.

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I love the power of one more, Ed Mylett, look that up.

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But there's a, I want to use the same example as before.

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If you're writing a book, each milestone could be how many pages you write in a day.

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Maybe it could be 10 pages, it could be five.

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It's all up to you and when you actually want to accomplish the final product by.

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You get to set that pace.

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And I just thought of something as I was saying this.

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I get some of these goals aren't actually going, maybe some of them aren't actually

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measurable.

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Or maybe I should say they don't seem like they could be.

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Like I said earlier, like maybe you're reaching out to somebody to learn something new.

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Well, how many, like let's take that into consideration.

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How would you make that measurable?

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Well, how many things do, how many new things do you want to learn?

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Two, three, five, 10?

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Is this the only person you're going to reach out to?

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How many people should you reach out to?

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Two, three, 10?

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Like everything can be measured.

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All these things can be measurable.

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There's a whole thing I was just learning about recently that these would all be considered

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performance goals.

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Things that you're actually going to do.

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But then there's another thing called growth goals.

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Now that's a whole other episode that I have actually just been learning about recently.

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And those growth goals are goals that you set for yourself that help you gain the ability

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to be able to actually achieve these performance goals.

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It was just like the root of all of this.

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So that's definitely an episode I want to make pretty soon.

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So let's just do a quick recap and then we'll wrap it up.

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So we talked today about how to make your small wins.

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Well, actually, first we talked about what small wins were, and then we talked about

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how to make small wins, your milestones, into being productive, realistic, and measurable.

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Being productive does not mean perfection.

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It does not mean just being busy so that you feel productive, making them realistic and

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make sure that you can actually do them at all.

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And being measurable, it just means adding some sort of quantitative value so you know

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when you have actually accomplished this goal.

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So there you go, guys.

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I hope this helps and I hope you're able to take this and apply it to your goals today.

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So thanks for listening to this episode of the Pursuit of Calling podcast.

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If you enjoyed it, I'd love it if you shared this episode out on Facebook and Instagram.

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That really does help.

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Don't forget to leave this podcast a five-star review.

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We don't need those one-star reviews.

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Again, I'm going to say it again, like Dave Ramsey says, if you've got nothing nice to

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say, don't say anything at all.

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It's not nice.

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All right.

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Keep on pursuing your calling and I'll see you in the next episode.

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I'm going to say it again.

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Keep pursuing.