Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash
With the start of each new year, we turn to think about our hopes, dreams, and goals for the coming year. Many people make a list of resolutions or goals at the beginning of each year, but then quickly forget about them or stop working towards them.
There are many reasons why this might be the case, but one of the biggest reasons is that you are picking goals that are haphazard and random instead of aligning them with your purpose. When you align your goals with a bigger purpose, then it becomes easier to incorporate them into your life and not allow them to fall out of existence as easily.
Whether you are making personal goals, business goals, or both, there are some things you can do to choose goals that align with your purpose and then take steps to make sure you reach those goals. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Find Your Purpose
Before you start to make goals, you should decide what your purpose is at its very center. While you may already have a vague idea of your purpose, you may be surprised to realize that it is hard to articulate. If you can not succinctly say what your purpose is, then you are not ready to start making goals.
One way you can find your purpose for the year is to do a brain dump. Take a piece of paper and set a timer for five minutes. During those five minutes, write without thinking about all the things you want to accomplish this year.
Write the way you want to feel, characteristics you want to develop, and the person you would like to be at the end of the year. This should be done as it flows into your mind with no judgment and no stopping to think before you write. The goal is to just unload anything that comes into your mind unguarded.
After the timer goes off, then you can start to go over everything you wrote and to start looking for patterns. Group things together that seem like they would support each other. Notice any outliers that are not congruent with the general feel of the list.
Doing a brain dump will help you notice what is actually most important to you and where your heart is when it comes to the coming year. Finding ways that the items on your list correspond with each other should give you a general direction to start moving.
It may even help to title each group of items with a single word that encapsulates the feeling or motivation around those goals. Narrowing down your desires to a single word can give you more focus and direction as you move forward into the goal making stage.
Outline Goals
Once you have narrowed down your purpose to a word or phrase, you are ready to start formulating goals that will help you work towards that purpose. You must come up with goals that are going to help you work towards your purpose and support you in becoming the person you want to be instead of distracting you.
Because you have the bigger picture and purpose in mind, you can create goals that matter to you. You can formulate goals that are important and that have relevance to your life. These are important things you need to consider with each goal you make. You might come up with a good goal, but if it is not the right time for that specific goal, then you need to be okay letting it go in preference for other, more relevant goals.
Goals also need to have certain characteristics to be helpful. A goal needs to be specific. Goals like, “lose weight” or “increase social media following” are not helpful goals. Specificity is what is going to motivate you to reach your goal. A specific goal enables you to know how far away you are from reaching the goal and when you have actually done it.
While goals need to stretch your abilities and take you out of your comfort zone a little bit, they also need to be possible for you to reach. We all have limitations on our time, finances, and other resources. Your goal should require work, but if it is not possible, all you will find is frustration.
The goals that you make also need to have a built-in time-frame. If you want to be qualified to apply for a job or promotion, what training or experience will you need to gain to be considered and when is that deadline? Not having a deadline or time-frame for each goal will leave you unfocused and make it easier to push the goal to the background instead of making it a priority.
Break Down Goals into Steps
You may think that once you have settled into what your goals are that you are done, but that is not the case. Even if you make your goals specific and attainable and time-sensitive, they are most likely an end goal and not the process that it will take to get to the end.
In order to reach your goal, you will need to break your goal down into smaller steps to create a path towards success. It can be overwhelming to look at the end goal, and those feelings of overwhelm and anxiety are some reasons why people avoid working on their goals. Breaking them down into smaller steps helps with progress.
In order to break a goal down into steps, you need to know where you are currently and where you want to be. Once you have that figured out, you can fill in the blanks in the middle of the steps to get to where you want to be.
You should treat each step in your breakdown as a small goal by making it specific and time-sensitive. Doing this will help you to keep moving forward and stay on your current timeline. Manageable small tasks will help you be able to stay motivated in the pursuit of your goal instead of giving up due to frustration.
Some goals may be bigger than others. Some might be small, but it is important not to skip them. You may have a goal to reach out to a contact in order to network. You may need to check out dickies scrubs from Uniform Advantage to update your work uniform. You may need to delete a time-wasting app. The size of the goal doesn’t matter, just that it is moving you in the right direction.
Check-ins
Another reason that people don’t follow through with their goals is that they forget about them. One way that you can stay focused and motivated is by having regular check-ins with yourself and touch base with your goals and progress.
The frequency with which you have these check-ins entirely depends on your goal and timeline. It may make sense to have a weekly check-in to see your progress and plan your coming week. If your goal is a long-term goal, then you may not need to check-in as frequently. You should at least check-in each month if you are not doing it more frequently than that.
During each check-in, be sure to evaluate the tasks you’ve completed so far on your goal, track the progress you are making, and set the next steps in motion. Progress doesn’t happen on its own, so tracking progress and making short-term plans to take more steps towards your goal is essential.
Give Yourself Grace
It is also important to give yourself some grace when you are working towards your goals. It is very unlikely that in pursuit of a goal you are going to do everything perfectly and on your established timeline.
Life happens, and it is important to be flexible and give yourself some room to make mistakes. Some people let a slip up derail their entire goal and they give up based on a small failure. You should expect these failures to happen and instead of letting them derail your entire plan, just make the necessary adjustments and keep moving forward.
Celebrating Success
With each task you complete as you move towards your goal, you need to celebrate your success. Celebrating your successes will help you stay motivated to keep working and will give you the necessary confidence in your abilities to keep stretching yourself.
Each celebration doesn’t have to be a big thing. It can be sharing with a friend the progress you made. It can be as simple as taking a moment just to feel the happiness that comes with making progress.
When you finally do reach your end goal, it is important to celebrate that in a more meaningful way. Take time to celebrate in the way that feels best to you. When you take time to celebrate the end of a goal, you are more likely to complete the other goals you make.
Of course, when you complete a goal, it is important to also not lose that momentum and set another goal to work towards once your celebration is over. Life is not meant to be stagnant and forward motion is important to help businesses grow and to see personal development.
The next goals you make can be related to the one you just completed or it can be completely different. You may need to start this process all over to find new goals. The important thing is that you keep your goals aligned with your purpose and don’t stop making progress.