Achieving Your Goals ~
How often do you achieve your goals?
Most people find it very easy to set goals and struggle with achieving them. It's very easy to talk about what you wish or desire, what you'd like to achieve or have, and it's an entirely different thing to work towards it.
To be successful, you need an action plan; having an action plan is what sets you up to succeeding and reaching your goals.
Let's say you have a weight goal (so common!) and you want to reach a desired weight or size. It's not enough to say you that you want it and set a goal of a number on the scale. You need an action plan to go along with the goal. Otherwise, it's just a goal. It's just a number on the scale, or a dress size.
So what do need in your action plan?
Tips for Achieving Goals:
Clarity ~
It's really important that you're clear on what you want to achieve. Get 100% clear about you want. All too often I hear goals of, I want to happy, or I want to be healthy. These are too vague. What does optimal happiness or health look and feel like for you? Be specific. Then write out in detail what you're goal is and post it where you'll see it everyday. Posting it helps remind you of your goal and helps to keep you motivated. Additionally, creating a vision board will further help you gain clarity.
Once complete, hang your vision board where you'll see it everyday. Give yourself at least one minute each day to connect with how you feel with the images, words, and/or phrases before you. This helps remind you of why you created this particular vision board in the first place. This reminder also helps inspire you to implement action steps towards achieving what you desire.
Achievable Action Steps ~
A goal is very unlikely to come to fruition without action steps. AND, if your action steps are too big or you try to do too much at once, you'll go into overwhelm. Overwhelm often = freeze. It's really hard to be successful or to have any "oomph" in you to get up and do something when you're overwhelmed. You really don't want to end up in overwhelm. That's why it's so important to break down your goal into achievable action steps.
For example - Let's say your goal is to get rid of 50lbs.
What are the action steps to help you achieve that?
Likely, you're going to look at your diet. What foods do you need to eliminate and which ones do you need to be consuming more of?
You'll likely also want to increase your daily movement. What does that look like? What kind of movement are you going to commit to? How often are you going to commit to it?
This is what I mean by breaking down your goal into achievable action steps.
Seek Support ~
I can't emphasize this point enough! So often people will be unsuccessful at reaching their goals because they don't have a support system in place. Your support could be hiring a professional to help you. In the above example, you might choose to work with a nutritionist to help you with healthy eating. You might also choose to join a fitness class or hire a trainer to help you with moving your body more. Perhaps you choose to do both. Further, make sure those in your life know what your goal is. If you have people in your life that aren't positive and supportive of your goal, limit your time with them. Their lack of support will bring you down.
Celebrate Yourself ~
Your success requires your celebration. It's crucial that you celebrate yourself every single day for the work you're doing at working towards your goal. Give yourself a pat on the back, literally, at the end of each day. Write out in a journal what you did you that day. Acknowledge every small step along the way, no matter how insignificant it may seem. Each time you do this, you feel good about yourself and help release feel good hormones. When you feel good about yourself, your body will want more of that feeling. This will inspire and motivate you to continue.
A Few Reminders:
- You will absolutely experience obstacles along the way. Know this before you get started. To better set yourself up for success, anticipate what these might be before they happen and have a plan to overcome them.
- Don't let today's slip determine tomorrow's actions. If you have a day where you don't do what you planned, that's OK. You're human. Be kind and gentle with yourself and let it go. Tomorrow is a brand new day. A clean slate. You always get a chance to start over.
- When you feel discouraged don't quit, reach out for support! This is where hiring a professional to help you can be so beneficial. Having someone there to reach out to on the days when you feel unmotivated or like giving up, will help you get out of the slump.
What goal(s) are you working on right now? Let me know in the comments, I'd love to hear from you!
If you've enjoyed this blog, I'd greatly appreciate you sharing it so that others can benefit from reading it as well. Thank you.
Looking for more tips to help you live well? Check out Your Live Well Journey - The Podcast, every episode offers ways to help you improve your self-care.
