In last year I spent an enormous amount of time perfecting the way I approach goal setting in my own life.
I am proud of what I came up with!
Even if in the back of my mind, I kind of think, my word for the year, 2018, was a fail instead of a win.
The things that I learned the most, from what I preached on paper and what happened in application are as follows:
- My goal weren’t seen every-single-day! (We moved house and papers where thrown away.)
- You have to implement a strategy around the big picture and how to break it down into quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily tasks.
- You need to be prepared to work extremely hard to attain your goal and sacrifices will be made along the way!
How To Be Smarter About Your Goal Setting This Year
1. Be Mildly Obsessed with the Change you want in Life
You need to have a mild obsession with your goal! This year my objectives conflicted with what was happening in real life. I was distracted by a house move, career move and divorce drama. Some of these distractions were pretty amazing, but naturally I chose to focus on the exciting things and slipped on what I had hoped to achieve.
Even though I was passionate about my goal, real life got in between me reaching it.
In 2019, I am going to be mildly obsessive with my goals!
2. Define your Goal
Take the time to define your goal. Your goal needs to align to your long-term strategy for life.
Why is your goal important?
If your goal isn’t important to you, you won’t be motivated to reach it. Be extremely specific in your reasons for achieving your goal.
How will this goal achievement enhance your life?
Will your life change in any way if you achieve it? In what way will your quality of life improve, if you achieve your goal? Will if make you a happier person? Will it improve your quality of life in any way?
Envision the change, specifically in the little things! Day dream about the new version of yourself. Be sure to day dream and imagine the changes often!
3. Make a Vision Board
A vision board allows you to use both the left, logical part of your brain, along with the creative right brain.
The exercise itself, allows you to think deeply about your goal.
On a nonconscious level, your brain starts to link different thoughts and memories together. Be very conscious of the fact that some of these memories may be negative feelings and memories.
At first you may think this is a bad thing! However, if you want lasting change, you will need to deal with these negative memories.
While going through the motions of creating the vision board, jot down the things that come into your conscious mind.
4. Decide what is Prioritise
In order to be successful in your goal setting, you will need to prioritise your time.
Think about it…
If your goal is to lose weight, you will need to make time for exercise and meal preparations. If you want to save money, you are to have to stay away from the shops. You may need to prioritise inviting friends over for dinner, instead of outings to a restaurant. You may need to change your online behaviour and stay away from online shopping.
One habit or behaviour-pattern will need to make way for another.
Complete the Goal Setting Worksheet
This year’s goals worksheet is designed to help you work constructively to achieve your goal.
There are two kinds of people when it comes to goal setting:
The first finds it easy to be faithful in the little things. Diligent in doing what needs to be done daily in order to achieve their goals.
The second, can dream and construct a massive legacy based on a little goal. These are the visionary, big picture kind of people. But let’s face it, often times, they (we) really battle to be faithful in the little things! Details don’t matter nearly as much as the end result.
Find a balance
When it come to long term goals – we need to recognize that both the big picture and diligence is needed to really achieve success in our goals.
The 2019 Goal & Things Worksheet is designed to:
1. Simplify a big goal
Break down the big goal in something manageable, like a single word or short phrase to give you vision for the year.
2. Help You Figure out Your Why
Why are you investing all this time to smash this goal? It must be pretty important to you on some level.
Once you have figured out what your why is. Take some time to figure out whether this goal is really going to make you happy as a person. Is it going to make you look good in front of your peers? Or is it going to add lasting value to your life?
3. Help you Identify 3 Focus Areas/ Targets in Life that will help you tackle your Goal.
In other words, break it down into something manageable by choosing specific areas or projects that will help get to the end goal.
Classic Example: Wanna Loose Weight?
Focus 1: Meal planning and Preparation.
Focus 2: Exercise, to put it simply. Or find a sport or activity that you actually enjoy.
Focus 3: Prioritise an active lifestyle over passive activities.
4. Enable you to List tasks that form a part of your Immediate Strategy
To put it simply – what do you need to do to really dive in and get started with your goal?
Earlier this year, one of my short-term actionable tasks was to buy batteries for my weight scale. It wasn’t difficult, it didn’t take a huge amount of time, but did give me a sense of satisfaction that I am going in the right direction.
List as many simple or more complex things to get you started.
Now, add a due date to the printable!
5. Form Short-term Goals
As I mentioned earlier – some people are really good at diligently following a set of step on a daily basis to reach their goal. For them point number 5 comes really easy.
I get really bored with repetition – but let’s face it – you need to be diligent and disciplined in the little things.
Short-term goals will get you started. As you move from quarter one to quarter two of the new year, you will need to keep on redefining your short-term goals.
Thankfully, that is a post for another day!
6. Thing Bigger – See the Long-Term Goal
Here we are doing the reverse of point number 5.
If you are like me, you tend to think of the big picture instead of the little tasks that will get you there. You may be the person who starts a couple of very exciting new projects each year, but never really finish them!
If that’s you, point 6, is a piece of pie.
If it isn’t, take some time to think beyond what is realistic and visualize what the perfect end result would look like and jot that down.
7. Envision the Reward
Reward in this instance doesn’t (shouldn’t) be the star you will receive at the end of the day. Take a moment and think of the intrinsic satisfaction or reward you will receive when you are diligent in the little things and courageous in the big.
Where to from Here?
Since you have gone to great lengths to define your goal, through this little exercise, I highly recommend you take this little goals sheet and pin it right next to (in the middle of) your vision board.
In my next post I will unpack the psychology behind a vision board.
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