Take Stock of Your Goals

According to Dr. Gail Matthews (Dominican University of California), people with written goals are 42% more likely to achieve them than people without written goals. Telling a friend increases this rate to 78%.

It’s March. Time to take stock. What goals have you kicked over the past 60 days? Create your “ta-da” list and pat yourself on the back. 

No? No goals kicked? What about steps towards your goals? Did you create those steps when you set your goals? Yes? ~ Fantastic. No? ~ Time to get on top of it. 

 Alternatively, your wheels may have been churning these past two months however, you’ve failed to get any traction. Are you caught in the trap of perfectionism ~ needing everything to be just right before you begin? It happens to many of us and we get stuck. We have a toxic relationship with failure. We spent that champagne-fuelled evening of December 31st visualising all of the amazing changes we intended to embark upon and subsequently have neglected to make any headway because we haven’t lined everything up and instead let chaos take over. This is the exact reason for the notion behind ‘just start’ or more famously ‘just do it’.

 If you’ve made a BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal) and have neglected to break it down into steps, that’s where you need to start. You then need to look at the habits you’ll need to adopt in order to execute on these steps. Next, scan your environment and determine what in your environment will serve you in your goal pursuit and what may be acting as an obstacle. Keep only what is serving you and minimise those detractors.

Our goals can only be reached through the vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success........... Pablo Picasso

Your To DO List

1.    Create a list of tasks that you can achieve ~ small wins ~ to help you advance towards your goal. 

2.    Identify habits that will help you achieve those tasks and ultimately your goal. These habits become your ‘systems for success’.

3.    Determine how you need to adjust your environment and do so by keeping things that will serve you. 

 When we start with the small wins we activate our reward system which acts as a catalyst to keep going. It also conjures up positive emotions ~ think pride, inspiration, contentment ~ which engender positive feelings and also motivate us to keep going. The habits are a shift in both mindset and discipline, without them you get nowhere fast. Where we often fall short is in the consideration of our environment ~ including the people that surround us.  If you’re not tweaking your environment, the odds are against you of making any form of progress.

 Make the time now to take stock and create a roadmap for building your potential!  

Kirsten is a performance consultant who works with individuals, teams and organisations to develop potential and make things possible. Contact her today to build the discipline you need to both set and achieve your goals and perform at your best.