Set Goals Not Resolutions To Achieve Results
There was a time in my life that every New Year’s I would set resolutions. For me, they seemed to be focused more around my health: Lose weight, exercise more, break a bad habit. Sound familiar? I found that they were focused more around what I should NOT be doing versus who I should strive to be. I usually found that by second or third week of January I reverted back to old habits and the resolutions were forgotten; well at least ignored to be honest. After many unsuccessful years of trying to stick to my resolutions; I finally just gave up making them. I lived for the day was my motto.
That changed four years ago when attending a Goal Setting workshop at my company. The idea of my life floating like a leaf on a river with no destination in focus didn't set well with me. I started setting Goals for myself and put a system in place to keep my focus on them. I have learned 3 important points about goal setting.
1. I always achieve or exceed 70% of my goals. Every year I set the bar higher, each year I'm amazed at what I can accomplish if I have focus and purpose.
Read all 3 Lessons learned here and start your Goal setting
Goal setting requires a system to keep it alive. Daily is too frequent ... I know if I did a daily review I'd be obsessing over them or depressed if I wasn't making progress every day. I'm posting today some more detail and probably another one in another few days. Would suggest you take a look at some of the links I embedded in the document. Good for you for setting goals ... it has done amazing things for me.
I think sometimes daily review can help, especially at the beginning of a goal-setting project. I don't have much experience with careful, plodding progress, and a lot of my goals require that (Be able to run this much by then, learn this language, read these books...goals I think I have in common with the rest of the human race). So when I go back to my journal each day and say "Well, I didn't learn any Spanish, but I plan to complete the first lesson in that Spanish book tomorrow. And, hey look, I ran much more today than I thought I could, so there's some progress!"
I don't know, it's nice to manifest my constant inner monologue into words on a page that (hopefully) I'll look back on in six months and say, "Ahh, look at adorable past-Anna. Ahora, puedo hablar espanol and peudo correr 1000 millas!"
So I'm hoping to trade current-disheartening for future-Anna gloating, if that makes sense. I love your blog though! Just reading about successful people makes me feel like its possible.
Anna - I have found that doing action makes anything possible. Even if it's a small step .. you just need to move forward and in no time you'll be amazed at how much progress you've made.
Could you give us an example? What would you suggest to women who want to complete an exercise goal or get a promotion at work? Should we break it into steps? Review every day? Believe me, I'd love to achieve 70% of my goals, but I can already feel myself slipping into 2011's patterns.
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