222. Burn Your SMART Goals: The MAGIC Goal Setting Rebellion
222. Burn Your SMART Goals: The MAGIC Goal Setting Rebellion
In this episode of the Embodied Writing Warrior podcast, Kayla delivers a hilarious and heartfelt roast of traditional SMART goals—and introduces a radical alternative: MAGIC goals.
This powerful new framework blends ancient wisdom, modern productivity, and a deep understanding of how identity, energy, and embodiment shape our results.
Here’s a breakdown of the MAGIC acronym:
M = Misogi: A once-a-year challenge that stretches your limits and reshapes your identity (inspired by The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter)
A = Actionable: Clear, aligned process goals that bring presence and power into your daily routine
G = Growth-Oriented: Choose goals that evolve your character—not just your outcomes (The Miracle Equation by Hal Elrod)
I = Identity-Based: Step into the version of you who already has what you desire (Atomic Habits by James Clear + The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte)
C = Celebratory: Track your wins, your up-levels, and your growth (The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan & Benjamin Hardy)
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, artist, or self-growth junkie tired of chasing metrics and missing meaning—this framework is a breath of fresh (and slightly spicy) air.
Tune in to learn:
Why traditional goal setting often leads to burnout
How to use discomfort as a portal to purpose
Why body transformation isn’t always the most growth-filled goal (and what might be instead)
How to build a consistent, soulful practice that fuels your dreams for 2026 and beyond
Embodied Activation:
Pick one big goal for the year that feels bold, a little scary, and deeply you. Make it personal. Make it stretch you. And don’t blast it on social—this one’s just for your soul (and maybe your inner circle).
Now run it through the MAGIC framework:
M — Misogi:
Choose a goal with a 50/50 shot. You’re not aiming for easy—you’re aiming for evolution.A — Actionable:
Map out the habits, rituals, or weekly practices that support this. Focus on what’s in your control.G — Growth-Oriented:
Ask: What traits or capacities will this build in me? What makes this the most growth-filled challenge?I — Identity-Based:
Decide who you’ll need to become to follow through. Embody her now. Speak her affirmations. Move like her.C — Celebratory:
Celebrate every shift. Every rep. Every time you don’t quit. Progress is happening even when results lag.
And remember:
The goal is fuel.
You are the destination.
Links Mentioned:
Books Mentioned:
Transcript:
Welcome back to the show and happy new year. Our first solo episode is coming in hot, so we're actually gonna be starting with a smart goals roast, and then there's a bit of a love powered SmackDown in the middle of the episode, so you're probably never gonna set resolutions the same way ever again if you ever set them at all.
So get ready. If you've ever made New Year's resolutions and you typed them out and you had the bullet points, made them smart, like all the productivity gurus told you to do, and then you promptly lost interest, sabotaged yourself, and then burned out by February, then this episode is for you. Because today we are throwing smart goals into the compost bin where they belong.
And I'm handing you something way more powerful instead. And this is gonna be a goal setting framework that actually honors your magic. Your identity, your energy, and who you're becoming, which is so much more important than any external goal you could possibly chase. So let's dive right in and get to the smart goal Roast, because SMART goals, if you're not familiar with this, this is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound.
These goals are cute. Until you realize that when we're talking about specificity and you make some very specific outcome or metric, you're God, then you're actually playing small and you're actually blocking the universe from surprising and delighting you with how much better it could be. And also specific often means that the achievement of that one goal is only gonna help you in that one specific area, and doesn't necessarily translate well to other places.
And I want you to honestly ask yourself, does your happiness truly lie in hitting that very specific down to like the second decimal point metric that you're chasing? Or could it be a more general range that you're looking for? And then let's talk about measurable. Here's the problem with this. When you let numbers eclipse everything else that matters about the pursuit of your goals, things like how you feel while pursuing them, who you're becoming and what you're learning along the way, you take so much of the joy and the presence and the magic out of the process.
And honestly, math class sucks when you could be in erotic storytelling 3 0 1 instead. By the way, I'll link that podcast episode for you. It's a good one if you find yourself getting hung up on numbers. Now, let's talk about achievable. Achievable, according to who. The problem here is that this is gonna bake limitation and small-minded thinking right into the goal setting process.
And if someone like Andrew Tate can blow up on TikTok for being a misogynist dba and other people make bank from creating a fart app, which I learned about from my dance Alchemy mentor at our Costa Rica retreat. We were all like, what? So if these things can make people money and achieve them fame, then seriously nothing is unachievable.
And now let's talk about realistic. Yeah, realistic. If you wanna play in the world of logic and settling and mediocrity, and again, this has limitation, baked right into it. How do you even know what's realistic until you go bigger? So the examples I just gave, Andrew Tate, the Fart app, they were a little feisty, so let's use a more inspiring one here.
Once upon a time, people thought that a four minute mile was unrealistic until the running King, Roger Banister went and did it, and then other people started doing it because it was no longer deemed. Unrealistic. And now let's talk about time bound. Personally, I actually love a good deadline in certain situations for things like projects, projects where it's mostly within my control.
Personally, I have crushed national novel writing month, many a time. And this is because I have quite a bit of control over how much time I set aside for writing, how much I focus versus being on multiple tabs, those kind of things. But time bound parameters for things like financial goals or business goals or body transformation goals.
In these cases, some of the things are in your control. But definitely not everything. So this time bound piece can create a lot of pressure. And pressure is going to create this chronic stress response, and that stress response is going to zap your energy and lower your energetic frequency. So you're actually more likely to repel the dream than call it in.
And I want you to imagine that your timing is always perfect and divine. I want you to rewrite the story around timing and being behind, and start to rewrite a new narrative where it's all unfolding in a timing that's better than your ego could ever predict. Case in point. I am currently living 2021 Kayla's Dream Life, the financial freedom, the ability to go all in on my dream business, to help others heal the relationship with food.
And let's be honest, in 2021, I was burned out from my personal job and that 2021 version of me wanted maybe more than anything. Was to leave that job, not because she hadn't loved it and appreciated it, but because she knew she was ready for a new chapter. And Kayla's ego would have loved for all of this to happen at once.
The dream business, the financial freedom, but it didn't. It took an extra four years. But here's why that timing was perfect and divine. I got to leave that job and then work at a new job that I absolutely loved for four years. It was honestly my favorite job I've ever had. It was a job that gave me routine and structure.
And a little side note, it's actually a job that weirdly enough, aligned perfectly with my erotic blueprint. But that would be a whole nother conversation. So this was also a job that helped me heal from my mental and creative burnout. It was a job where I met these incredible people, and ultimately it was this job along with dance alchemy that held the inspiration for food freedom fantasy, which is the most potent body of work I've ever created.
And I've created a lot of offers. Everything from Food Freedom Mind, body Mastery, ascend into authorship. Be the author of your body. I am no stranger to creating offers, and this one is the most powerful. And I might not have gotten the inspiration for those final missing puzzle pieces if I'd been able to jump right into full-time business in 2021.
All right, so now that I broke that all down, you might not love Smart goals anymore. I certainly don't. So what I'm gonna do now is invite you to take a totally different approach to goal setting, and I'm going to explain why this is so powerful. So I am welcoming you to the Magic show, AKA, the new form of goal setting I've created, inspired by a whole bunch of very magical humans.
So I have taken concepts and ideas from Carolyn. Well, Hal Elrod, James Clear, Michael Easter. Danielle LaPorte. Benjamin Hardy, Dan Sullivan. Yes, I read a lot and yes, I'm stealing like an artist, but I'm giving credit where credit is due. So I'll link all the books that I've gotten inspiration from. In the episode description, you'll basically have a reading list that will take you all the way to 2027.
You are welcome. So what I've done is I have created an entirely new framework of goal setting that is expansive. It is creative, it's pleasure based and it works so much better than smart goals ever will. So get ready for magic. So magic goals, I'm gonna break this down. It's another acronym and we're gonna start with the M, which is Miss Sogi.
And maybe you've never heard this word. That's okay. It is a word that I first heard in the book, the Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter, and in ancient Japan, Moogi was this Shinto purification ritual. It usually involved cold water, something like standing under a freezing waterfall. And the point was to cleanse the spirit and realign with nature and the divine.
Now, I'm going to relieve you right now by telling you no. You do not have to stand under a freezing waterfall or even a cold shower to create a magical thank goodness, right? The modern interpretation that Michael Easter talks about is this idea of once a year. You create this physical or mental challenge that is so difficult, you're not sure you can finish it.
You want it to actually have a 50% chance of failure, but not really, which we'll talk about shortly. This should be so far outside your normal comfort zone. And the point of this is that it's going to transform you, not because of the result you achieve, but because of who you've become through the doing, how you've changed your relationship with discomfort, how you've built your capacity for discomfort so you can do more.
You're really reclaiming being uncomfortable, not as a punishment. But as this portal to deeper purpose and deeper growth, and Michael Easter writes, the more quirky the Miss Sogi, the less chance you can compare it to anything else. It's really important to take on challenges that are your challenges.
Oggi is you against you. So that's kind of the first guideline. Make it quirky, make it your own. Make it something you can't compare to what anybody else is doing. The second guideline is that you are not advertising Miss Oge. Now you can talk about this with friends or family, people close to you, but you're not going out and tweeting or posting on Instagram or Facebook or making these big, bold claims to a lot of different people.
So that's magic. You're going for a goal that is Missy. It is big. It's gonna stretch your comfort zone. You are only 50% certain you can achieve the outcome. But achieving the outcome is not the purpose. The purpose is the capacity you build along the way. So that's the MA stands for actionable actions matter so much.
So you wanna create some kind of a process. Or daily rituals or things that give you some agency, this is so valuable because if you're pursuing some huge audacious goal where you're only 50% certain that you can achieve it, you wanna have these actions in place, you want a process, and this can be daily tasks, it can be weekly tasks, weekly metrics.
But you wanna make this clear. You want to have this written down somewhere that you can keep it top of mind or get yourself a damn passion planner this year so you can make your daily goal and weekly checklists. Yes, I'm back to using a passion planner and I forgot how obsessed with them I am.
Now I know some people say to focus on the result. And yes, I agree about getting into the energy of the result, which we're gonna talk about shortly. But I also believe the process matters so much more because with the process and the actions you're taking, that's where your agency is. This is where you bring the presence.
And presence is where all your power is. And when you're focused on one day at a time, one action at a time, maybe one week at a time at the very most, allowing those days and tasks and weeks to stack up, that's where the magic starts to happen. So that's a actionable G is growth oriented. Now, I got a lot of this from the book, the Miracle Equation, by Hal Elrod, and in this book, he's encouraging you to make a list of potential goals, potential Oggi goals, and then he gets you to ask yourself this question, which one of these goals.
Will enable me to develop the qualities and characteristics that I need to achieve everything else I want in life. So maybe you have your list of goals, maybe you have some health goals, career goals, creative goals, and you're trying to pick the one that's gonna give you the most growth. Now, if your first instinct is to pick the health goal first, because that's normally what you do, get ready.
This is where the SmackDown comes in. If you have put weight loss at the top of your list and prioritized it year after year, I am going to lovingly encourage you to choose something else as your top priority. And there's a very good reason for this. Here's what often happens when we over prioritize the body transformation or the weight loss goal.
There's a good chance that you're overp prioritizing this to the point it's keeping you from growing. Because here's the thing, I think to a large degree. You already know how to take amazing care of yourself. You're clearly invested in your growth. You're listening to this podcast when you could be listening to a True Crime podcast.
You're already pursuing growth, and I'm going to guess that you already have data on what works and what doesn't as you pursue health. But what will often happen though, especially in high achieving women with very high standards, is that we achieve this success and this stability in our wellness journey, and then we go after that other thing, the business goal, the creative goal, the career or relationship goal.
And here's the thing, it's uncomfortable. Yeah, there's a lot more unknowns and we don't know if we can achieve it. So we start sabotaging with food, with binge eating, with running ourselves into the ground until we burn out. Then we have to go back and focus on our health again. But if we keep doing that, we are never going to grow.
Because here's the thing, you don't need a better health and fitness plan. You are in a place where you would benefit more from growing in a way where you're learning to keep that consistency with your health habits while you go after that bigger thing that's actually going to grow you even more.
Because chances are you have focused enough on those weight and health goals enough times over the year to have a sense of what moves you forward and what doesn't. And here's the other magical thing. When you decide I'm done playing the weight loss rollercoaster game, I'm done. This does not get the lion's share of my attention.
Because here's this other big goal that actually deserves my attention, and then you go after that thing. That other goal is going to require your presence, your self trust, your consistency. It's gonna require your energy and life force and confidence. It's gonna require a regulated nervous system. So when you start moving towards this bigger vision, your health habits will have no choice but to change if you want to increase the odds of achieving this big dream.
But now it's not from this place of size six or bust because social media told me to. Now it's from this place of my energy is sacred. My consistency creates momentum, and I need all the energy and consistency and momentum if I'm going to make this dream come true. This is the exact approach we take.
Two, food freedom inside food freedom, fantasy. It's not hacks or quick tips or bandaids. It is deep growth and transformation where you create this empowered, peaceful relationship with food so you can make all the rest of your fantasies come true. So that's G growth oriented. The I is gonna be identity based, and this is about the energetics.
Who are you being as you pursue this goal? So this is really about being able to create your own weather, of being able to invest in the actions and the practices that bring you the joy, the peace, the confidence. This is really about living in the energy of that thing already being created. And getting better and better at living in these states more often.
And this is gonna come down to, uh, practices that build in the present and the embodiment. So you wanna start connecting more deeply to this future version of you. How does she view the world? What actions does she take consistently, even if they're uncomfortable at first. How does she handle pain and emotion and stress?
What states does she spend most of her time in and most is very important. You're not spending all your time here because every emotion is valuable and has a purpose, but is this future version of you generally joyful? Optimistic, trusting, playful. So just starting to get in touch with what her default temperament is.
So if you listened to last week's episode about my top journaling practice, this is where you can take all the lessons you learned in the previous year and start to embody them. You can use those lessons both for growth and for evolving your identity, and this can give you some powerful inspiration for what actions might be required of you in this new year.
So now we're onto the C, and this is about being celebratory. You want to keep this goal? In the gain, not the gap. By the way, this comes from the book, the Gap in the Gain by Dan Sullivan, and this is so, so, so important for high achieving type A women smart goals, where you're focused on the timeline and on being realistic and really attaching to specific measurements.
This doesn't always feel celebratory. It can even start to feel contracting and defeating when you're getting close to the deadline and it looks like it's not going to work. So when you're in the energy of celebration, you are tracking your wins, you're tracking your progress, the synchronicities. And you're not just tracking those tangible evidence-based wins from the 3D.
This is also about tracking the identity shifts, the energetic up levels and the growth. And let me give you an example of this from my own life. Like I said earlier, you can tell your friends and family about your Miss Sogi. I have one for this year. I'm not gonna tell you about it obviously, but I did share it with my dear husband now.
I love this man so much. He is this beautiful grounding force for my unicorn soul. So. When I told him my oggi, knowing it was big and wild and audacious, I was like, Hey, sweetie, you're gonna have thoughts about this. But, and after I told him what the goal was, sure enough, he had thoughts, reasons why it didn't make sense.
And yes, it doesn't make logical sense. If you're working within a smart goal framework, I didn't give him the memo about magic goals before having this conversation, so that was kind of my bet. Again, it wasn't supposed to be within a smart goal framework. You want this misogi to be quirky, unrelatable, what some people might even call crazy.
But here's where I noticed the growth and the identity up level. Was that I didn't let this conversation trigger or upset me when a previous version of Kayla setting smart goals would've been crying on the floor about how my sweet king doesn't support my vision. You know, something like that. Your girl's a bit dramatic, but instead I launched into this Ted Talk with him about the power of setting a goal so big it doesn't make sense.
But not doing it because you're necessarily attached to the goal, but you're doing it for the character growth, for the big energy you can generate. When a goal is unrealistic, but also wildly inspiring because it's unrealistic and you better believe I celebrated the heck out of that response to this conversation.
And here's the other powerful thing about celebration. You cannot fail at a magic goal. It's literally impossible. You're gonna celebrate whether you hit the thing or you don't. And here's why. In his book, the Miracle Equation, Hal Elrod has this beautiful reframe about goal setting. And I want you to carry this into 2026 and beyond.
So he writes that the purpose of every goal you set is to become the type of person who can consistently set and achieve significant goals. In other words, the purpose of a goal is to develop the qualities and characteristics of a goal achiever. It is who you become through the process that will serve you for the rest of your life and trumps any short-lived smart goal achievement.
Again, this is about identity and with this perspective, you cannot fail so long as you are a taking action in the direction of your misogi, investing into growth and building your skills, and C, upgrading your identity along the way. Now the goal is no longer the destination. You are the destination. The woman you're becoming is the reward, and then your actions and your growth are the vehicle.
And then the goal itself, that's just gonna be fuel in the tank. And when you're on a road trip, you don't sit there staring at the fuel gauge, obsessing about what level it's at. At least I hope you don't. That would make for a terrible road trip. Instead, you keep driving, you stay present, and you enjoy the view.
And yes, you can keep your tank full by reconnecting with the energy and the excitement behind your goal. But then after you've reconnected to that energy, you keep becoming the woman who can achieve it as well as everything else you desire your embodied activation this week. Is to set a magic goal for 2026 or whatever year if you're listening to this in the future.
So one goal, and it's gonna be you versus you. It has a 50% chance of quote unquote failure built in. So that's your M. It's gonna challenge your comfort levels, and you're gonna keep it private. Save one or two of your closest loved ones. You are going to brainstorm the actions and the process that will move you in the direction of this big dream.
You'll get clear on the growth that needs to happen and the identity you're evolving into. And finally, you're going to let this goal be a reason to celebrate all day, every day, all year long. Every micro win, every macro win, every time you notice yourself responding differently to difficult moments or choosing a healthy form of coping over a destructive one, and you're going to remember, you cannot fail because the goal is just fuel.
The destination is who you're becoming along the way. And if you're looking for containers to help you create this type of magic where your wellness journey stops being about gaining and losing the same pounds over and over again, but instead about building in the consistency and follow through and upgraded habits so that you don't find yourself turning to food.
When life gets big and uncertain and stressful, there are two ways I can support you on this journey. The first is with my one-on-one private immersion. Consistency is foreplay. This is where we rebuild your relationship with discipline so it feels hot, aligned, and sustainable for you. Which is going to allow you to create the health and the legacy you are turned on by.
So with this one-on-one offer, you also get lifetime access to my Signature Food Freedom Fantasy Framework and Course Portal, and that's the other way I can support you. Food Freedom Fantasy is a group program where you turn your food journey and your health journey into this spicy book talk worthy self-love adventure.
You can't wait to write the next chapter of, and it's through creating food freedom in this way versus using quick fixes or surface level bandaids that you do build this capacity to make all of your fantasies come true. If you're interested in either one, I'll link a call to adventure for you in the notes.
And until next time, this is my reminder to you that you're already smart enough. Now it's time to remember your magic. Take care.
