Setting the Right Goals for 2025: Align Your Vision, Values, and Actions

Welcome to The Esme Graff Podcast! Are you setting the right goals for 2025, or are you following trends that don’t align with your vision? In this episode, I dive into practical and faith-based strategies to ensure your goals reflect who you want to become, the life and business you’re building, and the actions that will move you closer to your purpose.

I’ll share:

• 3 essential questions to evaluate your goals.
• Why values, desire, and commitment are key to achieving success.
• How I started my journey with the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team (MLCT) and built a thriving career after personal challenges.

Whether you're navigating personal growth, professional development, or a fresh start, this episode will equip you with the clarity and tools to set intentional goals that truly matter.

✨ Download my free Goal-Setting Guide (click here) and take the first step toward becoming the influential person you were created to be.

Follow, like, and share this episode to help others discover their path to purpose!

Visit www.esmegraff.com for more resources and coaching support.

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Transcript

 Welcome friends! I’m super excited you’re hanging out with me today! I appreciate you spending your valuable time listening to this podcast. 

Join me every week as I share wisdom from scripture, practical ways to grow personally and professionally, and, of course, always with a little bit of humor from the lessons I’ve learned from my mistakes.  

My goal is to bring you insightful information that can spark inspiration and encourage you to live out your purpose. You have one life—go live it differently.  

Hey there! Welcome to another episode. Wow, mid-January is here, and we just got started, so we have no time to waste. Last week, I talked about goal setting, and I invited you all to download my free goal-setting guide to help you select meaningful goals. 

Listen, whether we want to admit it or not, we all have quit our goals more than once. I want to help you stop the cycle of mindlessly picking goals that you don’t even want to begin with. 

We all fall into the trap of new trends or old ones that seem to come up every year. Take the gym, for example. This is the time of year when the gym is very crowded, and there are substantial marketing campaigns for workout clothes and equipment to convince you to hit the gym.  I am not saying this is a bad thing; I am saying that if going to the gym isn’t something you value, desire, and are willing to commit to, it’s only a matter of time before you quit. 

Another trend I see this time of year is cleaning and organizing household items. We cannot forget about our closets. We need those clear dividers to hold our purses and clear containers with label-making tape on them. Maybe our closets will stay organized for some days, but the truth is that we do not care about how organized our house and closet are; they will not stay that way.  

Again, it matters how much you value, desire, and are committed to a goal. 

Previously, I shared how I started my journey as a Leadership and Team-Building Coach to support small businesses facing challenges with defining roles, boosting team productivity, and meeting milestones. My goal to help these businesses unlock their full potential and achieve sustainable success.

Along with starting my business, I also sent out the first Lead, Live, and Influence newsletter,packed with strategies to help you lead well, live with purpose, and influence transformation.

 Now, I can stand here and tell you I value, desire, and am fully committed to these goals because they will have a life-changing impact on the people I work with. And that is my priority. 

I wouldn’t be a good friend if I didn’t challenge you to consider the meaning of your goals and not just follow trends.  

So, are you Setting the Right Goals for 2025?

The goals we choose should align with who we want to become—personally and professionally.

I want to challenge you to think differently this year. You may ask Esme, how do I know if I am setting the right goals? 

If you are selecting the right goals, then those goals will be like traveling on a path that takes you closer to your destination.  

If you are still struggling with your goals, I encourage you to ask yourself 3 questions: 

• Who do I want to become in 2025?  This is a character-building and life-quality kind of question. If you consider answering it, I want you to use the three-question framework I used in my goal-setting guide. It answers how much you value, desires, and the level of commitment you are willing to put forth to become the person you want to be. 

Who you want to become has to do with the deep desires in your heart. Who you want to become has to do with your vision of the future you hope for. 

Proverbs 29:18 says that where there is no vision the people perish. (KJV) I love one version that says if people can’t see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves, but when they attend to what he reveals, they are most blessed. 

I truly believe we want to do things where it’s not just about us, when we want things that can help other people. When we are connected to God's vision and purpose for our lives, we can have clarity about who we are supposed to be. 

• The second question I encourage you to ask yourself is: What kind of life and business are you building? See, once you decide what type of person you want to be, it will be like your eyes see everything in a different way. You will start to notice environments and people who no longer match the better version of yourself. Things you used to enjoy will no longer be fun. Things you used to watch and think there was nothing wrong with will seem so inappropriate. You will feel it in your heart as soon as you are exposed to it, the places you have outgrown and the things that do not add value in any way—you will not want them around you anymore. 

This is a process, and I want to remind you that becoming a better version of yourself does not happen overnight. It takes nine months to have a baby, about a year to build a house, and years to decades to build a successful business. Absolutely nothing happens overnight. 

So, you are going to have to value, desire, and be fully committed to the life and the business you want to build and brutally cut anything and anyone that does not support your vision. 

One thing I can tell you for certain is that what you surround yourself with has the power to elevate you or bring you down. The good news is that you get to decide. 

• If you are still struggling with your goals, the last question I encourage you to ask yourself is, what action will move you closer to your vision? Sometimes, I feel this is the most straightforward question to answer because it’s simple: What is the first step? 

What I have found in all my years of experience is that if you take the first steps, you’re likely to take the second and third, and so on… 

Is the first step a phone call or an appointment? Is the first step to enrolling in a class or signing up for training? Is the first step a conversation you need to have with someone? 

Identify the first step and take it! Even if you think you know the second step, don’t go there yet. 

I had no idea what to do when I decided to join the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team (MLCT). So, the first step was to ask my good old friend Google. Then I remembered I thought one of the girls in the high youth group I co-lead once mentioned something about this leadership thing she and her dad had done.

So, I texted her to ask— and she connected me with her dad, who connected me with someone on the team who helped me get signed up. in two months, I will be attending the International Maxwell Conference (IMC) in Orlando for the first time!

All of this started with one Google search, which led to a text, which led to a phone call, which led to another phone call. Hahaha, but you see, none of this would have happened if I had not taken the first step. 

For those new to this podcast and unfamiliar with my story, let me share a bit about my journey. Ten years ago, I went through a devastating divorce after being a wife and stay-at-home mom for twelve years. Left with nothing but my two children, I had to rebuild my life and re-enter the workforce—a challenge that was far from easy.  

People always ask, how did you do it? Well, here’s my little secret:

• I took an honest inventory of the life I envision. The person I wanted to be #1
• I aligned my goals with my purpose and unique path.  The life I wanted to build #2
• Prioritize what matters most to me—not what’s trending. What step would bring me closer to my goal

And here I am today!

Friends, I had a great time hanging out with you today!  As usual, here is my disclaimer: Everything I share in this podcast comes from my personal experience. I can only hope is that my stories inspire and encourage you. I cannot give you professional advice, and I cannot say that if you do what I do you will have the same results. But I highly recommend you find a professional who can provide the support and help you need.

If this podcast inspires you in any way, give it a like, follow, and leave a review to make it easier for others to find it. You can also use the QA section on Spotify to let me know what you think of this episode.

I would love to connect with you – you can reach out on social media, wherever you listen to podcasts or visit my website at www.esmegraff.com

Have an amazing week. Download the Goal-Setting Guide today and be the influential person you were created to be!  Later