Episode 140: Making New Year Goals That Make Sense
The Hardcore Self-Help Podcast with Duff the Psych
Robert Duff, Ph.D.
4.5 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 3 January 2019
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is a short and sweet episode that I recorded before leaving for an end-of-year vacation with my family. We talk about making goals for the new year.
At the end of the year, many people start thinking about goals and resolutions. I see absolutely no problem with that. However, it's important to try to do them in a way that sets you up for success rather than failure. Here are a few quick tips:
- Establish goals as part of an overall year-end review.
- Keep your goals reasonable.
- You can also include larger overall aspirations, but use those as guiding lights rather than attainable goals.
- If you have too many goals, or goals that are too far from your starting point, you can set yourself up for success and continue the negative feedback loop.
- Subdivide your goals into small manageable steps.
- Even if you're not starting with your full capacity in any given goal, you are still doing more than you did before. Start small and build from there.
2018 was a great year and I'm so pumped to knock 2019 out of the water. Thank you so much for all of your support, and for contributing your questions to the podcast. This would not be possible without you. Please continue sending me your questions, feedback, and ideas to duffthepsych@gmail.com.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Even if you could conceivably go out there and you know run a mile a day without really hurting your body |
| 0:06.8 | But you're not doing that at all right now that mile a day would probably be a bit unreasonable to start with, right? And instead if you start with, you know, let's run a few blocks every few days, that is still a whole lot more than you're doing right now, even if it's not what your body can take, |
| 0:25.0 | even if it's not your highest capacity, right? |
| 0:28.0 | So don't beat yourself up if you're doing less than you think you can. |
| 0:31.0 | Just use that as a starting place and build up from there. |
| 0:34.0 | Hey everybody before we start the show I want to make a couple disclaimers. |
| 0:38.0 | This show does cover a wide variety of topics related to mental health and life in general and some of those could be sensitive for you. |
| 0:44.4 | I want to simultaneously encourage you to be brave in consuming difficult content, but also respect and recognize your limitations. |
| 0:51.8 | So please use your best judgment. I will never be offended if you |
| 0:55.1 | need to skip a question or an episode entirely, but feel free to feel it out, check out the |
| 0:59.6 | episode and just see what happens. If you need to skip, that okay but you know feel free to give it a shot first. |
| 1:04.8 | I also need to say that while I am a psychologist I'm not your psychologist and I'm not your therapist. |
| 1:10.0 | This is not intended to be direct medical advice and you should not use this as a substitute for professional help. |
| 1:15.0 | So with those said, let's go ahead and get into the show. All right. |
| 1:35.0 | Hello friends of all varieties. |
| 1:37.0 | This is the Hardcore Self-Help Podcast episode 140. |
| 1:40.0 | I'm your host Dr Robert Duff, aka Duff the Psych. |
| 1:43.0 | I make mental health content for real people just like you. |
| 1:45.8 | And today I want to talk about goals. |
| 1:48.6 | So it is the new year, it is 2019. |
| 1:51.2 | Technically as I'm recording this, it's the end of 2018, but you'll be hearing this in the new year. |
| 1:57.1 | And obviously a lot of people will be thinking about goals, thinking about reviewing the previous year and looking to the year ahead, resolutions, all that sort of things. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Robert Duff, Ph.D., and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Robert Duff, Ph.D. and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.