Here's how you can establish achievable goals to prevent feeling swamped by setbacks in personal coaching.

Benchmarking is important as well. Part of attainable you need to as much as possible have a solid benchmark to compare. If you make a goal to run a 10k race in a year, at first it looks like it meets the criteria. But if you never even run a 5k or a 1k race before, and never done any exercise at all.. the goal may nor be so smart. Set yourself up for small successes to roll into larger successes by using benchmarks.

By creating SMART goals, you are understanding what you genuinely want to achieve and why it's important to you - I use SMART goals because they help me to track my progress and keep moving towards my goal!

In order to get to where you want to be you have to first get clear on where you're going. In that setting goal setting is akin to a navigation system. If you don't plug a clear destination into your navigation system it's going to take you a lot longer to get there - if you get there at all. Same thing applies to goal setting. Know where you want to go so you can effectively execute on the steps you need to get there.

Breaking goals down into smaller steps is critical to helping prevent overwhelm and that nagging feeling of self-doubt that can show up when we're trying to figure out the path to accomplishing a really big goal. I like to start with 90 day increments and mini-goals that must be accomplished during each 90 day period to make progress on the really big goals. From there, I help my clients reverse engineer what needs to happen every month during that 90 day period so they can come up with small, manageable tasks each day to move forward.

The smaller the step, the more likely you will meet less resistance and have success. Do not be afraid to go to small. Sometimes when you cross those "insignificant" things off the list you get to your goal and the success feels even better because you are now changing your view on "insignificant" things or actions.

Go with the flow. If something isn't working don't keep pushing it to the breaking point to make a point. Would you continually try to hammer a screw into its hole? No, you'd go and grab a screwdriver after the second hit.

Even with a perfectly laid plan, things may not go as expected. When that happens you have to be willing to adapt the goal and make changes as needed. Getting hung up on small setbacks or changes can work against you in the long run. Similarly , being fixated on one path can keep you stuck and lead to valuable opportunities being lost or missed if you're not willing to embrace change and flexibiliy.

Celebrating wins is one of the most important things you can do to make sure you don't lose steam and belief in yourself when things get challenging. Celebrating the small wins along the way trains your brain to believe you're capable of achieving the goal and you'll be less likely to get discouraged or give up wen things don't go your way.

Always celebrate the wins. This will give you the positive energy to keep your momentum going forward, and give you something to coast through the setbacks with.

Celebrating wins, no matter how small, can be really hard for many of us. One thing I've found useful with my clients is to be really clear on long-term goals in the beginning of a coaching relationship; we then check-in every few sessions to see if we are still on track. When progress is observed, ask: How will you celebrate? This question sometimes confounds clients - they are not used to celebrating, they are used to pushing forward! I invite my clients to acknowledge their progress in *some* way, even if it is small (e.g. to get up from their desk and yell "woo-hoo!!!"). Celebrating teaches the body that movement is happening, and helps the momentum and motivation to continue. Woo-hoo! I wrote out this answer and posted it! :D

Every setback is a chance to improve your skills and grow. Use the setback to learn what needs to be done instead and create greater efficiencies going forward. A setback isn't. failure as much as it is insight into what needs to be changed, eliminated or improved.

Even the best of the best use coaches. Don't feel like you are less or your accomplishments are less, simply because you sought out support. This is a stigma we need to work hard to remove from our society in general. Getting assistance does not equal weakness or incompetence.