I spent 9 years of my life working for personal and business success trainers. If there’s one thing I learned a lot about in that time, it’s goal setting.
Setting goals is a powerful way to give your life valuable direction. You might want to achieve personal goals like changing your body shape or eating a healthy diet; family goals such as saving money for a holiday, or career goals such as learning a new skill. Or even parenting goals like the ones we talked about last week.
Why should you bother with goal setting?
In my mind there are four reasons to set goals:
1. Focus – Have you ever felt like you’re working hard, but that you’re not getting what you want? It may be because you aren’t working on the right things. When you think about what deepest desires are and set goals to achieve them, you proactively take charge of your life. Where your focus goes, your energy flows!
2. Measurement – Setting goals gives you something to measure. A goal needs to be trackable in order to know what the end goal in mind is. There’s got to be a way to say that you’ve accomplished it, so you can celebrate your success.
3. Alignment – your daily actions need to be aligned with your deepest values in order to bring you happiness. For instance if one of your core values is adventure, then that needs to be tied in to at least one goal or else you’ll never feel satiated with success. Consider your values and set your goals around them; what goals take kindness, courage, strength, health, patience, humour, or confidence, for example?
4. Inspiration – Setting goals for yourself will breathe new life into your days and make you excited to get up and going. A great goal is one that’s exciting, and even a bit scary, but still attainable. Goals that you’re comfortable with are not goals that will push you to try new things. On the flip side a goal that’s too scary might be out of your reach right now, and halfway through you’ll lose steam and get frustrated by it. Find the sweet spot where you feel a bit nervous but excited too.
I usually start off each year with 1-2 big goals, then I have smaller goals for each month (that usually help me get towards my big goal). My goals used to all be career focused. But now that I’m balancing my work life with being a mother, it’s important to me that I take a more holistic approach.
My Favourite Goal Planning Guide
I’m going to share with you a copy of my favourite goal planning guide. I did this guide last year and have done it again this year. Okay I’ll admit… I’m still working through this year’s, but I’ve got my biggest, scariest goal all set!
The guide’s written by one of my favourite motivational authors and speakers, Mel Robbins. It’s a step-by-step workbook to help you complete 2017 and guide you through setting powerful goals for 2018.
Why would you start by completing 2017? Well, it’s just like how you can’t give driving directions to Riverwalk without knowing where you’re starting from. You can’t set powerful goals for the year without taking the time to look at where you are right now. You’ve got to consider who you are and where you are in your life before you can look at where you want to go.
And then, you can plan your big, exciting, and scary goals for 2018.
What I like most about this goal planner is that it’s holistic. It’ll allow you go through all the main categories in your life: love, work, fun, health (in mind, body and spirit) and help you to get present to how you’re feeling in each of these areas.
Get it here: http://melrobbins.com/bestyear2018/
Give it a try and let us know in the comments below what you think!
Tips To Stay On Path Towards Your Goals
Most people think that after setting a goal, they’ve got to have the motivation and willpower to work towards them. That’s only partially true 🙂
Yes, you have to have the motivation to work hard. But assuming the only other thing you need is willpower will set you up for failure. Sorry, but your willpower depletes!
Sadly our willpower is not around at a constant level all day, waiting for us to use it. Roy Baumeister, a prominent psychologist, has done extensive research into the phenomenon of ‘decision fatigue’, which is the idea that our willpower decreases with each decision you make. When your brain is low on mental energy, it’s hard to make good decisions on the things that matter, like your goals.
Here are three ways to achieve your goals with less willpower:
1. Plan each day the night before. Research from Harvard Business School shows you make better decisions if you’re making them for your future self versus making a decision in the moment. So plan as much as you can the night before: what your next day’s schedule is, what you will eat, and even things like what you will do if a sugar craving hits.
2. Work on your goals in the morning. In the mornings, your willpower is higher because you don’t have decision fatigue yet. The later in the day you leave it the more tired you’ll be.
3. Get committed. Committing in advance makes you accountable. It takes the question out of whether or not you will do something. Sign up for a half-marathon, commit to a deadline, or sign up for a class of some sort with a set start date. Then make sure to schedule this into your day/week.
Let me end with the number 1 tip I’ve ever learnt about goal setting: the key to being successful is to pick goals that you really want to do in the first place. Even if you never reach the end result, you’ll have fun and enjoy the process.
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