We have a genuinely large problem
with how you and I are doing goal setting.
You see, one of the most important
relationships that we have,
one of the most influential relationships that we have,
is a relationship with somebody
that is a love partner for us.
We tend to spend hours and hours with them.
We tend to have long talks with them.
We tend to open up fully to them.
We tend to share our spirituality with them.
We tend to share our vulnerability with them.
These are people that really hold us
to our greatest standards.
These are also the people that in the most loving way
would always be there for us.
And at the same time, we never take a minute
to consider that the reason why sometimes
it may be that we don't achieve our goals,
and dreams and ambitions,
is because we don't have these people
who are the most important people enrolled into that vision.
They are not in alignment with what we wanna create,
and we are not in alignment with them
in what they want to create.
And that, my friends, is one of the most
fundamental problems of why a lot of the goal-setting,
and ambitions and dreams are not fulfilled.
You see, if you've been arguing with your partner
for the past year or you can see yourself arguing,
and fighting with your loved one in the coming year,
it may be because there is an unmet need
that is not being fulfilled.
Or there's an unfulfilled dream
that is not being catered to.
And to mitigate that, to invite that into a conversation,
a great way to get started
in building beautiful relationships
and honestly being able to achieve
the most beautiful life that you truly deserve to have,
you need to enroll your partner.
You need to have a common goal, a common direction,
a common value system with your partner.
And for that, I wanna give you a tool, a methodology,
that I was honestly given to by my wife.
My beautiful, wonderful wife, Dr. Neeta Bhushan.
Until I met Neeta, until she introduced me
to the idea of relationship goals,
I was pretty much focused on myself.
I was only saying this is what I wanted to achieve.
This is what I wanted to get in my life.
And I never really found a way or a reason or a place
where we could commonly sit together
as somebody I loved or appreciated to say,
"Hey, this is what I wanna achieve, what about you?"
And is there a common dialogue we could have,
and is there a relationship conversation
that needs to be had so we know
how we need to support each other in the coming year,
or where will we need support in the coming year?
Let me show you the three-step, really simple process
that honors you, that honors your partner.
And at the same point in time,
creates something that's common,
that's something that both of you can hold dear to
to create a greater life for both of you.
Step one is define what is important to you,
what is important to you personally.
And have your partner define
what's important to them personally as well.
Have both of you write down exactly what you would want
to have intentionally in the coming year.
You don't wanna necessarily set goals
which are numbers and digits that you wanna chase.
What you wanna set is intentions for life.
What is it that I wanna focus on?
What is it that I wanna create?
And the reason why intentions are better than goals
is because goals usually tend to create this mindset
where our joy and happiness gets associated to that number,
and we wait for that number to happen.
Wait for that thing to happen
for us to feel joyous and fulfilled.
And that's not necessarily a very beautiful,
fulfilling way of living life,
which is why I invite you to not set goals,
but set intentions.
What is it that you wanna be?
How is it that you wanna be?
And what we also found really helpful
is we found categories that were important to both of us.
And we knew that these would be the categories
that would be the undertone of our relationship.
These are the categories that we know
that we may have conflict upon,
we may have different beliefs about,
we may be finding hard to find the common balance.
Now, you could use any version of categories.
You could use The Lifebook categories.
You could use The Wheel of Life categories.
Or you could use these six categories
that me and Neeta use year after year
as categories to understand where we are,
and define exactly what we want to do
with our lives in the coming years.
The first is experiences.
What experiences we would like to have
in our life this year.
Travel experiences and other experiences.
The second is money.
What are our money goals?
What are the things that we wanna have this year?
What are the money outcomes that we would like to have?
What kind of abundance we would like to live?
The third is relationships.
Relationships with our parents, relationship with our kids,
relationship with our friends.
What is it that we want to create intentionally
in our relationships in the coming year?
Health, health being what is the focus
of our health in the coming year?
Are we trying to get even fitter?
Are we trying to create more movement in our life?
Or how are we trying to find
more nutritious meals in our life?
Or what is it that and who is it that we are inviting
in our life that can help us live even a healthier life?
Next one is career.
Both of us have flourishing, thriving careers.
What is it that we want to do next in our career?
What is it that we wanna achieve next in our careers?
And lastly is growth, personal growth, spiritual growth.
What is the growth or what are the items that we wanna do
to grow ourselves as human beings?
And these six categories, when we sit down within ourselves
and do an intentional exercise to go,
"Okay, let's define what's important to us,
what are the intentions around these six categories,"
it reveals most of what is really,
really important to us in the coming year.
Now, again, like I said,
if you feel there is more dimensions
you wanna add to your categories and so forth,
Wheel of Life is a great tool.
You can watch a video that will link up below
for how to use the Wheel of Life.
Once you've defined what's important to you personally,
once you've defined these intentions
for yourself personally, the second part is crucial.
You see, a lot of the time, just defining what you want
is not enough for you to really understand
why that is important to you.
And that sometimes is the loophole,
the challenge that we have in a relationship.
We may know that our partner
really wants to focus on their health,
and they may be visiting the gym two hours a day.
But if we don't understand why this is so important to them,
we may wonder, "What are you doing in the gym for two hours?
What is it that you would possibly do
for two hours in the gym?"
And that is the reason it's important for you
to understand the why behind that intention
that your partner has,
and also to understand the why behind your intention,
so you can be clear on what is more important,
what is less important,
why something has taken priority in your life
that might not have taken priority in your life before.
You wanna be intentional, you wanna be clear.
You wanna understand your partner's point of view,
and you wanna understand your point of view.
The further you break down the why,
the clearer your understanding of why,
the easier will be the next step.
And the next step is where the conflict often would occur,
and that is to negotiate.
You will find that as you have defined these intentions,
after you have listed these intentions,
a lot of your intentions will be common,
and that would be fantastic.
You would be like, "All right, you wanna do this,
I wanna do this, let's go."
There's a common goal, there's common values,
let's go for it together.
And there will be certain things
that you will not find that commonality.
For that matter, sometimes,
it will be completely opposite of each other.
You may have a very different intention
for life in the coming year,
and your partner may have a very different
intention of life in the coming year.
For example, in the coming year,
I intend to write my next book.
That means that I would want to dedicate eight months
of my time, energy, resources
in creating some of my best works
to be able to write that book beautifully and powerfully.
At the same point in time, it is a possibility that Neeta,
because she's just coming out of her book preparation,
and book launch and so forth,
she may want to finally take a break,
and kind of unplug and and celebrate and travel,
and do something else that may get in the way
of me wanting to sit down and write my book.
So we'll have to find a common balance,
and find a path that works for both of us.
At no point in this exercise
does one person's dream outweigh somebody else's dream.
Remember, a fight in a relationship often is an unmet need,
or an unfulfilled dream.
You want to find a way to fulfill both the dreams.
And find negotiation in asking for what's important to you,
understanding what's important to you,
and understanding what's important to your partner,
and finding how is it that we can create balance?
How can we have it all?
Because we can.
This exercise gives us that opportunity
to preempt what the next year may look like.
It helps us understand what would be important
to our partners so we can support them.
It also helps our partner understand
what's important to us, so they can support us.
It's also a beautiful way to build
further understanding of your partner,
which will lead to an even more loving,
and beautiful relationship.
If you're wondering how could you further your understanding
of goal-setting and goal-getting,
this next video is perfect for you.