How To Set Goals You Can Reach

Setting goals is a common topic especially around each New Year but of course the best time to set goals and start making them happen is NOW. Learning how to set goals you can reach is vital.


Start With A Process

Have a process that will let you take the steps to help you achieve what you want. It seems odd but sometimes people set goals that they don’t want – because it will mean they have to give up something they won’t give up. And sometimes people set goals they achieve, without understanding that in getting that goal – they have put something else in jeopardy that they didn’t intend.


Ecology Is Important.

Ecology isn’t just about conditions in the environment. Our personal ecology - internally and how that creates action in our external environment – is important to remember. Be very clear and remember, just as you learned in high school science class – actions have equal and opposite reactions. For example ... You get in control of your weight – that might not please an insecure partner who shows love by giving you food.


Congruency

Your alignment between your stated ambitions and your personal actions need to be aligned. When you are congruent in your thoughts and actions, you are on target to achieve your ambitions.
Get Your Unconscious Mind On The Job Too!

Congruency needs help from the less-than-conscious mind too. It is the You which breathes for you and goes on doing all the things on autopilot so you don’t have to worry about them happening on time.  Help train your unconscious mind to track opportunities and keep you on target by telling it exactly what you want in line with your goals and a great way to do that is to write your goals and creating a mind map or visual representation too is an even bigger help.



Put Your Goals Into Your Future

Take yourself forward to a time when you have achieved your goals. Picture what is happening in your life now that you have achieved them. What do you see, what do you feel, what has changed in your life now? What other things are you able to achieve beyond this now you have arrived here? Bring it to life in your imagination and feel it and see it and deepen the image and the feeling and you will know ‘when you get there’, and reach it next time for real.


Get Accustomed To Delaying Gratification

If you want to lose 50 pounds and you want to eat that chocolate bar, then you have a choice. Which impulse is going to win? The one you want or the one that you don’t bother to shutdown and choose and just let “happen”?  You may not know it, but you choose either way. If you choose the one you “don’t want” then guess what. You’re kidding yourself.  Make up your mind. If you want to pile on more weight (or whatever self sabotaging behaviour you pick) you are entitled to do so. Just own it, and don’t be pleading for sympathy while you sabotage yourself.  That short-term gratification is killing your chances of a gratifying life. But hey, it’s your choice.   Going without can seem like a punishment. Here’s news. Submitting to every impulse to feel good for the moment is the real punishment. You are what you ate. You are right now, living in the sum total of all the decisions you’ve ever made. If you would like something different for your life then your actions have to be different.


Give Yourself Some Treats

Mark your progress with some treats to show for your good habits. Make a list of things you have not done that you’d like to do and make them a part of your routine as a reward. Maybe a hike somewhere that you like or a drive to somewhere you don’t often get to for a weekend away.


Plan Goals For All Parts Of Your Life

Setting goals for only part of life can leave us neglecting other areas that  need to be in balance too. We can sometimes focus on just one thing, while we fail to see that other elements in our life are leaving us hungry for something we haven’t considered.

Think about making goals for all these areas:

Health
Relationships
Career or Business
Education
Financial Wellbeing
Spiritual
Contribution

Self Care

What would you like more of in these areas? What would you like less of?  What actions might you be taking in all these areas that you’ve not spent time on thinking about, but would enrich your relationships and your life in general, both now, and in the medium and longer term.


Summing Up

Remember ... we are all a work in progress.
That’s a good thing. It means that we hold the key to the future that is most in line with what we’d really prefer. Knowing ourselves well, helps us know what that is.




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And if you'd like a copy of the worksheet to go with this post go here



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