Ep97: Summer Goal Setting: Practical Advice for a Fulfilling Season with Dr. Beth Trammell

I am an Associate Professor of Psychology at Indiana University East , where I'm also the Director of the Master's in Mental Health Counseling Program , and I'm excited about summer , and today's first episode of the summer season is really about exploring intentional ways that you can kind of plan for the summer , right , and so I want to start by having you think about

what it is that you want the summer to look like , right , whether that's with your kids or with your work schedule or your home schedule or projects you want to get done that you have been kind of putting off until a different season has come . So I want to talk a little bit about goal setting .

I actually talk a lot about goal setting in both my you know therapeutic practice , but also in working with students and other people . Right , that goal setting is something that while we kind of think , hey , yeah , I know how to do goal setting , and then you don't achieve your goal , and then you're like , well , what just happened there ?

So I find that most of the time , folks who set goals don't have a specific , the goal isn't specific enough , and so we're saying like , I want to work out more , I want to drink more water , I want to spend more time with friends . It's usually like a more statement , but we don't actually talk about what more looks like .

If you are wanting to work out more over the summer , then you have to establish where are you now and what is realistic to move to achieve your goal right . So if you're working out once a week and you say , well , I'm going to work out five times a week , is that actually realistic for you ?

Being specific is one thing , but then also being realistic about your goal is another potential pitfall that people fall into , that they shoot for the moon and then it's like , well , actually two weeks later you give up on your goal .

And so I want to encourage you to think about kind of two things within goal setting being specific about what you want that to look like , and trying to be realistic . And so maybe it's about traveling , maybe it's about your health , maybe it's about some sort of social goal , whatever that looks like for you .

Try to be really specific about that , particularly as we think about the next couple of months of summer . And one kind of final thing I'll say about goal setting is that we have to be prepared for setbacks or obstacles to achieving our goal .

For example , if I'm trying to lose a few pounds over the summer , I need to be prepared for all of the sugary treats that may come ice cream stops or celebrations with friends or family reunions , things like that . I have to think and be intentional about what I am planning to do when those obstacles come .

So when there's a buffet of food out and I'm trying to lose weight , I need to prepare myself for a strategy of what that's going to look like . So maybe I'll say I'm allowed to have one dessert when we are at the buffet of food with my family , but not 12 bites of every dessert , which is kind of my MO , if I'm being honest .

So think about intentional summer goals that you want to achieve this summer . Sometimes people see goals and they think about doing a summer bucket list , which I think is great .

So , thinking about what are maybe bigger things that you want to achieve that you want to put on a bucket list , I encourage you to write those things down , post them in your house somewhere , tell a friend we have lots of good evidence to say that if you post it or if you tell someone else about your idea , your goal , your dream .

You're more likely to achieve it because you've got people in your life who are going to try to hold you accountable to that . So what are things that are on your bucket list ? Maybe you have five things over the summer that would be on your bucket list and you can start to check them off in an intentional way .

I'm going to talk a little bit about kids and summer specifically here , and so if you're not a parent , maybe you still listen in as a person who might just be interested in this . But specifically for parents , I want to think about what do chores and responsibilities look like over the summer for our kids ?

So I think summer definitely takes on a different rhythm than the school year , and that's great , you know . I think our kids need us to rest , which we're going to talk about in another episode . How do we do rest ? Going to talk about in another episode . How do we do rest ? Well , so tune in for that .

But it doesn't mean that summer should be without structure .

It should be without any kind of responsibility around the house , and so , while you are allowing some space for kids to have rest and relaxation over the summer , I always encourage parents to maintain some version of a routine or structure , and so , for me , structure means clear expectations and effective routines .

When we have those routines that we want them to get into , it doesn't mean they have to wake up at seven or eight in the morning , but it does mean that , hey , here is a checklist of these five things that I'm expecting you to do every day for the summer , so that might include chores around the house that are age appropriate , which , by the way , kids as

young as kindergarten could be doing chores every day . There are some great chore lists for age appropriate types of chores . Getting your kids in the habit of doing things every day there are some great chore lists for age-appropriate types of chores . Getting your kids in the habit of doing things every day is great .

What I did with my own kids this year is sort of created a checklist of things that they go through , but allowed some variety , and so one of their options , or one of their requirements , is to be creative every day for 20 minutes , and so I gave them a list of a few ideas for what being creative could look like .

So I want them to paint or draw or color , or they could go outside and kind of be creative in nature . They can build something they could do Legos , but anything that keeps them in this kind of creative mindset . For 20 minutes they have to read for 20 minutes .

They have to have what I'm calling thinking time for 20 minutes , and that would include kind of word puzzles or a jigsaw puzzle or Sudoku or word search or things like that where they're just kind of thinking , or word search or things like that where they're just kind of thinking .

They have to move their body and be together , and I actually added hydration for my kids this summer , which has been kind of a unique challenge for them because I think as adults we tend to focus more on drinking enough water for your body .

But I realized last summer that they played outside a lot , they were at the pool a lot , and so encouraging good hydration for the kids was something that I included on their list . So that's just an example of what I'm doing in my own life and if you would like a copy of that list , I'm happy to share it with you .

You can just email me and I'll share it with you as a template . It's actually very simple , just a simple Word document , but there are some ideas for you . The short story is , having some sort of routine that works for you and your family is something that would be good to keep them in , even over the summer .

So I think about my friend and fellow guest on the show . She's actually coming back again to talk about some court things , tara Egan . I always come back to something she said on an episode on how do we kind of balance social media with our teenagers in particular , and she said you know , the important thing is that kids show up for their lives every day .

And so I think about what that looks like for you and your kids . How will they show up in their lives today , and what do you want them to do to show up in their lives today ? The last thing I want to talk about is sleep and making sleep routines still an important part of the summer .

Not all of you are going to love me for this , that's okay , but our kids really need to maintain a consistent sleep-wake cycle throughout the year , and that doesn't mean that they have to go to bed while it's still light out for some of us , eight or 8.30 , but it does mean letting them stay up till two or three in the morning and then trying to get their

bodies back into the swing of school in a couple of months is just not necessarily advised . So you may just be kind of asking for more trouble later . That doesn't mean you have a day or two over the summer or a day or two a month where they're staying up late because they have a sleepover or whatever that looks like , right ?

I'm not talking about never doing this , not necessarily a black and white kind of thinker , but maybe trying to keep their bedtime at 10 and their wake up time at eight . If it pushes back an hour , you're probably going to be okay when we come back to August and you have to retrain their bodies to wake up much earlier and go to bed much earlier .

But if they are extending their bedtime or their sleep-wake cycle by several hours , then it's just going to be harder to kind of get things back on track . So think about ways that you can maybe maintain a constant sleep cycle or at least a similar sleep-wake cycle for your kids .

Might be easier later in the summer when we're talking about getting ready for the school year to start , which will be an episode that I share with you later in the summer . So just a few thoughts as we are stepping into summer , and I just want to encourage you that intentional planning will make you feel more successful , but don't go overboard .

You know summertime is about a different rhythm of life , and so my encouragement for you today is just to envision what that looks like and then take some intentional steps to make that happen . So thanks for listening today . Next week we are going to talk about how do we engage with teams . That is part of what we are going to talk about next week .

So tune in for that one and until next time , stay safe and stay well .