I’m a bit behind in my ‘how to set the right New Year’s Resolutions’ post. Truth be told my year didn’t start out exactly the way I had anticipated. I’m constantly amazed at the curve balls that life throws us. The moments that you could never in a million years anticipate coming. One of those moments happened for me at the end of last year, when a close friend of mine died very suddenly and tragically. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks analysing how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking, figuring out where different, at times unexpected, feelings are coming from. Amongst everything, it has really brought to light the fragility of life and that we just don’t know which year, which day, which moment will be our last. It makes all the day-to-day frustrations feel so trivial and forces me to reflect on how much more I still want to do with my life. My dear friend was so vivacious, so outgoing, so herself, that I hope and believe she would have had no regrets.
The tragedy has really highlighted how important it is to make sure we're actually achieving all that we're capable of. And I believe the best way to do that is through setting goals. But how do you know which goals are really important, and then how you go about ensuring you achieve them?
The first thing I do when I talk to clients about their goals is to help them clarify what their goals are. I guarantee most people’s New Year’s resolutions would have revolved around becoming healthier/fitter, being more financially stable/budget conscious and then - depending on where people are in life - finding another job / finding the elusive life-partner / buying a house. You get the drift. But unless we really understand why we are setting ourselves these goals, we’re going to have a really hard time sticking at them. The outcome may be important to us, but so are so many other things in our lives that pretty soon the waters become muddied and we’re not sure why avoiding that Friday night cocktail with friends was actually a good thing!
You need to start with the end in mind. What’s the end-goal? Is it to retire at 50? Buy the perfect family home? Travel the world? Think about where you want to be in 5-10 years. Feel it, live it, see every detail. This is your end goal. Now come back to the present and think about the next 3-6 months. What short term outcomes will help you achieve your end goal? If you can’t see the connection, get rid of it. Only include objectives that will lead to your end goal. You may achieve other things along the way, but put your focus on those few objectives. Once you have your goals written down, pick one. It’s much harder to be working on several goals at once so focus on one at a time. Also, as willpower depletes your willpower resources, if you put energy into one, for example skipping the morning coffee on the way to work, you may find there’s nothing left to give to your bigger, more important goal, like eating a salad for lunch.
Now you have your one goal to start working on, how do you go about achieving it?
1) Tell people. Accountability works. I tell my kids if I want to achieve something for myself because I know even if they don’t understand the why, they’ll keep me accountable! The more people you tell, the harder it is to cheat!
2) If your goal is to stop something, like quitting smoking, you have a much better chance if you have a contradictory behaviour to replace it with. If on a Friday you normally go to the pub and having a drink in your hand at the bar is strongly linked to smoking, go to the movies instead. You can’t smoke in a cinema so it makes it difficult to engage in the behaviour you’re trying to stop.
3) Create habits that support the goal. Everything is so much harder if we need to think about it. If your goal is to exercise every day, don’t decide to just do it at some stage when you think of it. You won’t stick at it. Plan to do it as soon as you get up, or as soon as you get home from work. Habits need a trigger so get in the practice of doing it at the same time / after the same activity and you have a much better chance of sticking at it!
4) Check in with yourself, or with an accountability partner often. Are you on track with the goal? Is it still something that leads to the achievement of your end goal? Is there anything that needs to be changed? Regularly reminding yourself of why you are trying to achieve your goals will help you stick at them.
5) Finally, once the first goal is on auto-pilot (because of the habits you’ve created), add in the next goal. It takes about 30 days to truly embed a habit so aim to wait at least this amount of time before starting on each new goal. Slow and steady wins the race and if you tackle your goals this way, you’ll find that by the time you get to the end of the year you’ve achieved a lot, and are so much closer to your end goal.
It's so easy to just meander through life. It's only through setting achievable goals that we can really start moving forward and live the life of our dreams, a life we can be proud of.