Goal Setting is Grim (And Doesn’t Work)…A Guide to Living Your New Year With a Grin

Dr. Brad Miller 0:08

All right, this is December 27th, 2023. This is the New Year's episode or the end of the year as we transition from 23 to 24. Let's begin at the mark.

Hey there, lifter uppers, Dr. Brad Miller here with the Cancer and Comedy Podcast. I'm just thrilled that you chose to join me here today. And here's the podcast where we look to offer a bit of a perspective on things here on this end of the year 2023, the beginning of the year 2024 special episode of the Cancer and Comedy podcast.

We're going to talk today about how goal setting is grim. And how when you have cancer, or other things that kind of change the equation for you, you need a guide to live in a new year with a grin. To old pirates were in the pirate retirement home. And they were sitting there chatting about the good old days of being a pirate and all their adventures. One pirate said to the other, Hey, how'd you get that metal hook for a hand? The first guy said, Well, you know, hey, we were ransacking a merchant ship in the West Indies and I got into this incredible sword fight with the ship's captain. And he cut off my hand. Fantastic, said the first pirate. And how did you get that peg leg? First pirate said, Well, we were on a rant Sankey, a schooner off the coast of Haiti. And I got into hand to hand combat with a scooters captain and he swung a gigantic sword. And it was such a force that it cut off my leg. Wow. That's amazing, said the first pirate. And how do you get that patch over your right eye? I'm standing on the deck of the ship when a seagull came and crapped in my face. Oh, that's how you lost your eye as the first pirate. Well, second pirate said, it was my first day with the new hook.

I want to talk a little bit about perspective here when it comes to the end of the year. And the beginning of a new year. We often explode things out of proportion. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to get it right or to do something brand new as we end one year and enter the new year. And I want to talk to you for a few minutes here today on transitioning from 2023 to 2024, about how you could have some kind of proper perspective and give you a different way of approaching things here in the new year.

Comedians often have a huge kind of humorous way of their takes on New Year's resolutions. One comedian and actress named Bobby Slayton said I can't believe it's been a year since I didn't become a better person. Comedian John Melendez says My New Year's resolution is to stop hanging out with people who ask me about New Year's resolutions. And comedian Joey Adams says May all your resolutions last as long as your leftovers. What is going to tell you, whatever process you may be using for resolutions or goal setting, or whatever it is in life? Relax, okay. I have bought probably a dozen books about goal setting in my life. And several of them are specifically about goal setting here at this time of year around the end of one year and the beginning of another one. And they can be quite tedious in what I would call grim and not all that helpful. I mean, I've spent a lot of money in that I've bought courses and things like that about goal setting, and they have these formulaic things about how you can do things in a timeframe of certain timeframes and rank things in order of their importance, and there are different categories of your life. And I want to share with you that I've done much of that stuff. And there's a place, I believe, for some goal-setting in your life. But a lot of times, it's just what I call a two-dimensional, you put on a piece of paper, and it goes in a stack somewhere or goals and in a, maybe a vision board or something like that.

Because what happens when things go against the plan? Go against the resolution or the goal-setting plan? I'm recording this on December 27th of 2023. So, just a few days before New Year's Day of 2024. But I can't help but look back to exactly one year ago today, December 27, 2022 because that's when I got my diagnosis that I had prostate cancer. And that turned all my plans and my goal-setting upside down. Got the call from the doctor, and on December 27, two days after Christmas. And it just kind of rocked my world. And as I often say here, I just had the laugh to keep from crying. And that's kind of what I did. I kind of chuckled about it kind of in disbelief and denial, things like that. However, I was devastated because it met all my plans and goals, which had been cast out the window.

And so what do you do? What do you do when there's a detour in your plans? What do you do when things have been crushed or crashed? That's pretty grim. And the goal-setting process I've been using, I'd had not, was not really all that helpful. Let me tell you what was helpful. I want to share with you that Hope is transitioning from that process of planning, putting things on paper, and projecting out what you want to see happen. What helped me was to see what was right before me and to magnify and expand that what was right before me was my wife. And what was right before me was my grandchildren and my three adult children and opportunity that I didn't even really see before me at the time. What I'm getting at is cancer doesn't have to destroy you. But it will delay you. And it will give you a detour. But I want to say that you also have to see things in a different light beyond the two dimensions and go to three dimensions. And I believe even four dimensions is what I want to talk to you about today about how we need to move and how we look at the new year in different dimensions.

There's a person who was an Arif pilot during the Vietnam War named Admiral Stockdale, and he had an incredible way of seeing things that we now know as the Stockdale paradox. And I read about it in the book called Good to Great some years ago, and it kind of goes like this: Admiral Stockdale became an admiral and later became very much involved with powerful things in life and in the world of politics and so on. He was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. And he emphasized the harsh realities of being in a prisoner of war camp and called that the Hanoi Hilton. It's continued to maintain an unwavering hope. He talked about facing the brutal realities of a situation, no matter how grim, while maintaining a positive and optimistic mindset about the ultimate outcome. Its Stockdale resilience. During his captivity, I invited him to balance realism balanced with optimism. So what was happening is some of the guys who were imprisoned with kind of had a pollyannish kind of pie-in-the-sky kind of thing. We're gonna be home by Christmas, we're gonna get out of here, they're gonna get us out of here. And when that didn't happen, they were crushed. And some of them didn't make it and others gave up immediately. They said you will never get out of here, never get out of this prison. The paradox, that stalked out talked about was recognizing the challenges but staying committed to the cause, and during the difficulties, believing that there's an ultimate triumph and navigating the adversity at hand in order to achieve it. Your final destination, in his case was to go home.

It seems to me that a lot of New Year type songs and sayings and quotes have a lot to do with this kind of thing of dealing with reality and dealing and moving on. I love Classic Rock songs you too as a Sancho New Year's Day, all is quiet on New Year's Day, how's the song goes, a world in White gets underway. I want to be with you night and day, kind of a starkness. And then I want to be with you. Even the old standard song, the old dank law old lang zine. And the word old anxiety really means the old days, longing for the old days. What is probably my favorite song in this genre of new kind of New Year's oriented songs is a song by Dan Fogelberg called Same Old Lang Syne and talks about in this song how you, just by chance, met a former lover in a grocery store on New Year's Eve, on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. And he was mesmerized by her. And they had some conversation about what they had done before in their life. And they had some talks about what might have been, what could have been, and where they were at how she was now married. And he was now a performer and things like that. And he puts it this way: we drank a toast to innocence. And we drank a toast to now. We tried to reach beyond the emptiness, but neither one of us knew how. So there's that? How do we deal with the emptiness? How do we deal with the present circumstances we're in if something bad has happened to us, like cancer? And how do we move forward in faith kind of taking the Stockdale paradox to go through the endurance piece to go through the perseverance piece and all that kind of stuff. And to deal with the reality as well.

Oprah Winfrey said this quote, “cheers to another year and another chance to get it right.” Helen Keller, you know her, she said that success and happiness lie within you. Resolve to keep happening and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties. Those are some things that some people have said, but I want to know what you got to say. I hope that you'll reach out to me at Brad@CancerandComedy.com and tell me your thoughts on this New Year's time.

I can tell you my thoughts on December 27 of 2022. Just a year ago today was okay, what's next? Am I going to see another Christmas? Am I going to see my grandchildren grow up? I was having some doom and gloomy thoughts. And what's the next step? Is it worthwhile to even take the next step I was facing a pretty grim prognosis. I hadn't done some things medically this past year, I could have been in bad shape. But I just want you to know that this is all about what's next and what to do about it. And not a two-dimensional thing. I call this a four-dimensional thing that can help you, I believe, to deal with this whole thing about your new year and a new day with a process that you can work through and end up along the journey of life.

For instance, right now, I'm looking forward to something that's what's next for me. Tomorrow, I leave with My Vague family, we go on a vacation for several days over New Years. And it's something we have not done in a long time: my three adult children and my grandchildren all going off together. And we're spending several days in a cabin in the mountains. And we're going to have a great time, I'm sure. But that's a dream I've had for years. But I finally put it together this year and did something about it. So here's what I want to share with you is a four-part process. It's a four-dimensional thing, if you will. They can help you live your life in 2024 with a grin that means having satisfaction in life and some joy in your life, no matter what I call this four-dimensional plan, the ACTS plan, or the ACTS process.

So it goes like this. You get the letter A, and the letter A is for taking action. You can live your life by doing something about it. Okay? In this past year after I got diagnosed just a year ago, today, I decided to do two or three things, one of them was to follow a course of action with my doctors and to deal with what I needed to do in terms of my actual cancer prognosis, get in there and get serious about it and deal with it. And so that meant surgery for me. And it meant a course of action to deal with side effects. And I'm a lot better state now. And I know some of you are thankful for that, and I'm praying for you as well in your life, said that things go well, but it's about taking action that was one part. Another part of the action was to get healthy, otherwise, get me to lose some weight, get some my diabetes, and some other things, or control began working out daily. I also began to do some other things about being very conscientious about spending time with my wife and my kids and that kind of thing. And another part of the action piece for me was starting this cancer comedy podcast to help serve people like you.

The second part of this is the letter C, with the myth of connecting to a higher power. And for me, that meant to go to a place where I'm a retired pastor, and to know make sure that Bible study and prayer and meditation are part of my life and part of the healing process for me know there is something greater than myself. And I want you to do that. And that's why I make a part of almost every time we get together here, what do we like to call the faith that or break is segment of our podcast episodes, we're talking about a situation in the Bible or some other spiritual thing that can be helpful to you because I truly believe that a spiritual aspect of your life is a part of the healing process. So you got to connect with a higher power. And that is what you can do. So the aim is to take action, to do some of the actions I'm taking, what do you take, I developed a podcast, and I got my health in order, in order best I could the seed to do so spiritual practices, prayer, meditation, journaling, things of that nature.

The T in the word ACTS, and the third part of this four-dimensional process, to get a grin into your life over the grim of goal setting, is what I call think with storage with strategy. Think on a long-term basis. A lot of times, goal setting is very short-term, isn't it? You know, let's lose 10 pounds, or let's do this, the strategic plan is strategic thinking is how am I going to actually change things you know, there is a win the deal with you're going to go to a destination, if your destination have a fulfilled happy life, there's going to be detours along the way. So what do you do when the detours come? How are you going to handle that, so how you gonna kind of things and mentally this is kind of the mental part of this, how you got to plan your life appropriately. And this is where some goal setting does come into play in your short-term plans and your short-term applications of this to what you can do, but it's strategic thinking. Part of my overall vision was to see my grandchildren. A year ago, we got together with my two granddaughters around Christmas time. And they were five and two at the time. Now they're six and three. And they were giggling, having a great time, and I really had the vision to see in them is 21 and 18 year old, young women. Well, that doesn't just happen if I just think about it and wish it is not about goal. Your New Year stuff is not just wishful thinking; it is about doing something, doing something powerful with your life. So how are you going to get there? How are you going to do that? So for me, this podcast and my health, and my spiritual life, and my relationship life, we're all a part of that.

So there's the A, the action, the C of the connection to a higher power, and this T of thinking was strategy and the S part of this is to serve others with love. This is the emotional part of this, which I believe that you have to have. And you need to write all this stuff down. And the emotional part of this is how I'm going to serve others. And so I'm developing a course and coaching and other processes to help people going through cancer or other debilitating things, and they help to deal with it with humor. I liked it, healing with hope and humor is what we'd like to say here in Cancer in comedy. And so I believe that a big part of healing is with hope and humor. And so I just want to serve other people by doing counseling. I've did counseling and coaching throughout my career as a pastor. I've done preaching and teaching as well. So I believe there is a teaching component. So I'm developing online courses, and online coaching, and developing events coming up in the next year. And speaking engagements all in the mind, to help people change their mind, to move from the grim to the grin, and the grant is to have fulfillment in your life no matter what. And to not give up. And to do that with love. And to say, I share that with you because I love you, lifter uppers, as I love to call you lifter uppers because it's all about telling the story of lifting one another up. So if you've got great stories to tell me, let me know. Go to Cancer Comedy and let me know.

If you'd like to be interested in one of the courses we are developing, you can find one, there's a free course we have at cancerandcomedy.com/free. That's where we have our basic course, healing with hope and humor. It's 5-15 minute sessions, which outlines much of what we're talking about today. But a lot of this has to do, I believe, with eventually developing what I think is important to me. And I believe it can be important to you.

The fourth dimension, serve others with love, ACTS, is develop what I call a credo. So credo is different than a goal, short-term goal or even a little different than a resolution, which can let you down and often do. A credo is kind of statement of belief, a creed in your life. And what I try to do on the courses that I'm teaching is help you to develop your credo to to cope. That's what I want you to do. That's my calling right now. My love of you is to help people cope with cancer with hope and comedy. So a part of that is developing your own personal statement. Here's my personal credo. I'm gonna give it to you right now, this is kind of what if I have a process here that takes me to this place. This is designed to set the tone for my 2024. And that literally everything I live around this statement and believe it goes like this. My name is Brad Miller, I will not let cancer define me. I will leverage cancer to redefine my life for the better in my relationships and to drive me forward in my remaining days to fulfill the mission of sharing a message of healing through hope and humor. And teaching the biblical message that a cheerful heart is good medicine. But a crushed spirit dries up the bones. That is what I'm all about. I'd love to help you get that kind of thing going on in your life. That's what I'm all about. And the Bible, I believe in the book of Hebrews, kind of talks a little about this. And this kind of goes to what I often do: have a moment of faith moment. I call it faith it or break it. But in the Bible in the book of Hebrews, Apostle Paul talks about how you need to have something to strive for. It kind of goes like this in verse 12. There's a large crowd of witnesses all around us. So we must get rid of everything that slows us down, especially sin that just won't let go. And we must be determined to run the race that is ahead of us. We must keep our eyes on Jesus, who leads us and makes our faith complete.

So having said that, I think I take it a great lesson in that it is all about there are people watching how we handle cancer. There are people wondering how we're going to cope with it. And young people ask terrible questions sometimes. And sometimes they're just ridiculous about cancer and most people care about us, but they're watching us. We are an example to others. So we need to run a race as a cancer warrior, that we need to be mindful that we just need to put up all the nonsense, put away the nonsense and get with what really matters in life. So you need determination for your new year of 2024. That my friend is what really matters to you.

And I invite you to use my ACTS plan to get what matters to you. And it makes a big difference. You don't see things just in two dimensions. See things in these four dimensions. Understand that there is a reality here. There is a reality that we do have time to live and there's a place that we live, and there is a movement that we have. And we got to do something with that. That is significant, don't waste time. That's one of the things I've learned this past year from December 27, 2022, to December 27, 2023, is take action, and don't waste time, and to do something of value. So the thing I want to do a value in 2024 my friends, is to serve you, to serve you the cancer and comedy audience the best way that I can. How can I do that? Well, I just want you to know a little bit more about me that I do have a background in ministry, I was a pastor for 43 years. And so that meant I dealt with a lot of people who had cancer, okay, a lot of people had other bad things happen in their life. So a lot of time counseling people and dealing with that, both in practical means helping serve them by the meals and other things that were done for people, and visiting them the hospitals and things like it, I had funerals.

We're talking about spiritual care, we're talking about practical care, I was involved with that. And I love that part of my life, because I love to care for people. I also cared so much about this life transformation thing that I went and got a doctoral degree in life transformation. It took me several years to get that done. But that means I got some training in life transformational skills and applications that I just want you to know about. And that's a part of what I'm about. And you know, the thing is, I just like to have fun. I like to have fun. One of the things I'm really enjoying doing is talking to people who are great teachers and leaders, and even some great comedians who are making me laugh and lifted me up. And that's what lifts me up. So a bit like to watch movies and things, and to see comedians. And one of the things I'm really looking forward to, and this next year of 2024, part of the process here to be helping serve you to bring in to turn the grim into a grand into your life is to bring on great guest for us to deal with, including great comedians, and people are going to make you laugh to put a smile on your face. But we're also going to bring those on as guests and people, we're going to deal with some of the hard stuffs on the mental health things and some of the physical health things and things are getting better sleep and things like you know how to deal with relationships that are tearing us up, suicidal tendencies, all the terrible stuff that comes with cancer, and how to deal with nausea and all the bad stuff that comes with it as well. We're going to deal with all that kind of stuff, you're in the year 2024, we're gonna have great guests on and we're going to serve you the best way that we can. I just don't think it's about goals that are kind of short term, I think is about living your life.

This is about living my life, and you live in your life, and I want to be able to serve you, I want you to be able to reach out to me at cancerandcomedy.com My email is Brad@cancerandcomedy.com. And that's what I want you and I to be about. Cancer is not the end of the road, it is the beginning of a new adventure. But things have changed, they will change, they will change, they have changed for me. My life has taken a dramatically different course, since December 27, 2022, to December 27, 2023. And when December 27, 2024 rolls around a year from now, things will be different as well. It's how you handle it that makes all the all the difference. And I hope that you will go on this journey with me. And we will handle it in such a way that we can not be burdened or brought down by the kind of the kind of bully of a of a goal-setting process. But we can be released to have a lot of fun in our life, be released to enjoy our relationships, be released to appreciate the journey wherever it takes us to deal with all this bad stuff that comes along.

One of the things I really want to share with you as I bring this to a close, is I'm here for you. So reach out to me at cancerandcomedy.com or email me at Brad@cancerandcomedy.com and I will respond to you. And we look forward to serving you. I coach Deb and I in many many wonderful ways in the year 2024 And we're gonna be here. We're gonna be here. It'll be here for you to help to lift you up. I know you're gonna help lift me and many others up as we all move to transfer and transform the grim of cancer into the grin of celebrating our life together. So let me just leave you with this. A chill for the heart is good medicine. But a crushed spirit dries up the bones that's from Proverbs 17:22.

Outro:

We'll see you next time here in the year 2024 on the cancer and comedy podcast with Dr. Brad Miller, looking to transform looking to provide healing to cancer-impacted people through hope and humor.