Top 3 Tips for Goal Setting

6/1/2021

Happy New Year to you all.

2021 maybe hasn’t started off the way we would’ve hoped with going into a 3rd lockdown 5 days after the clock struck midnight, however, that doesn’t stop us planning for the future and having hopes, dreams and aspirations.

I spent the time between Christmas and New Year reviewing the successes of 2020 and soul searching what I would like to BE, DO and HAVE in 2021. I then put further pen to paper and captured this in my journal and on a vision board whilst creating my Life Statement – How I would like my life to be and my Mission Statement – How I want to contribute to the world.

When setting goals or New Years Resolutions, intentions, hopes, dreams, aspirations, challenges, outcomes, whatever word works best for you. Here are my top 3 tips that I encourage my coaching clients to consider when they are putting pen to paper.

For the remaining time during this blog I am going to use the word goal for sharing my top tips, after all that is the title of the blog!

1. SMART Goals

SPECIFIC – What is it you specifically want to achieve and why? What is the benefit to you of achieving the goal? What will achieving the goal give you? The more specific you can be at this stage, the better especially if you can identify the emotional connection to the goal and why you want to achieve it.
MEASURABLE – How will you know the goal has been achieved? What will you see, feel, hear and taste? How will you have had at least a 1% improvement on where you started? How will you track your success?
ACHIEVEABLE – Make sure that this pushes you outside your comfort zone, after all this is when our motivation kicks in. You need to make sure that the goal stretches you, but not that much that you feel you will never achieve what it is you are setting out to improve.
REALISTIC/RELEVANT – How does the goal fit into what you want to be, do and have? How realistic is the goal that you are setting? Where does the goal fit in the grand scale of things? How will the goal improve your life? Is the timescale realistic?
TIMESCALE – When do you want to achieve the goal by? Remember this timeframe can be moved along the way and that’s not unusual to do that as things change along the way eg you may be forming new habits and because of the progress you are making, you want to extend the timescale so that the habit really is cemented.

2. Values and Motivators

Our goals need to be congruent with our values otherwise we will experience conflict. Values are typically singular words. The singular word could mean something different to different people despite it being the same word. It is important to understand what that singular word means to you
Values are words that we have had instilled in us from our earliest memories typically from people of influence eg family, friends, teachers, employers. If you want to know your top 3 values then please contact me at claire@accendocoaching.co.uk and I can arrange a values elicitation session with you.
Motivators are also typically singular words that may be similar words to values and normally fall into 12 categories. For more information on motivators please email claire@accendocoaching.co.uk and I’ll share my motivation questionnaire with you so that you can understand the priority order of yours.
Motivators can move us towards goal achievement or away from goal achievement so it’s important to make sure the ones that move you towards your goal achievement are captured in the statement you write.

3. Celebrate Success

It’s important to start with the end in mind and explore what will success look, feel and sound like. When it’s achieved, how will you celebrate? What will be your reward?
When achieving any short, medium or long term goal it’s important to have milestones along the way to track progress. Those milestones could be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, whatever works for you and the goal you’ve set.
At those milestones ask yourself, what is going well and why? What do I need to do more of? What’s not going so well and why? What do I need to do differently to get a different result?
Capture along the way what your celebrations are going to be. For me it’s the simple things in life that can be the greatest reward eg having a bubble bath in peace and quiet with the candles on and no children entering the bathroom or an afternoon tea or picnic in the park with the family. The rewards do not need to be extravagant, just enough to say “Well Done and you’ve got this!”

I hope that this has helped you start to set goals. If you want to delve deeper then I would love to talk to you about my Ignite & Inspire membership programme where I am looking for 10 people to become founding members and work with me for 12 months to create a legacy which demonstrates everyone has the skills and confidence to lead in a crisis.

Author

Claire Cahill is a Confidence and Leadership Coach specialising in Employee Engagement which gave her the material to write her books