How To Set Goals You’ll Actually Achieve
A framework for goal setting at any time of year, in order to achieve your hopes and dreams.
In the wake of the pandemic it can feel like we should have everything figured out, or have achieved so much during lockdown that it can be overwhelming or at least out of our control.
But, the best part of setting goals is that you can change them at any time.
You can recommit at any time or make them as big or as small as you want. When the external situation shifts and changes, all we can focus on is our internal mindset and what does lie within our control (good habits, reasonable news consumption, emotional resilience etc), and instantly we can feel calmer, more self-assured and like we're headed towards our dreams.
What hopes do you have for the rest of the year?
Regardless of whether you're reading this at the start of the year, the month or even with 100 days left to go, I wanted to give you a flavour of what goal setting looks like over in my world.
Read on for tools and tips if you’re in the mood to get your objective setting hat on!
The Four Steps to Goal Setting
If you’ve been following this newsletter any amount of time you’ll know I love a structured list format per topic, and today is no different. We’ll be breaking down goal setting into the following aspects:
Creating a Vision
Setting Intentions
Building a Plan
Taking action
You can use my break-down of each step provided, and step five would be on step further — to seek support on a 1-1 basis to get exclusive access to coaching to set your year up for success.
Read on for more.
i) Creating a Vision
Goals connect the present to the future you want to create. They require a shift — a change in focus, energy or momentum.
To begin your initial step involves dreaming up where you want to get to by adding context and texture to your innate desires. Creating a vision is an exercise in faith (what do you hope might happen for you).
For this exercise you may want to do one year from now, or for some of you going further ahead makes more sense.
So, where is this end destination you have in mind? What does it look like?
Dreaming up your vision and then crafting a vision statement that reflects it requires thinking big — removing limitations, tapping into your hearts desires and letting your subconscious mind override the rational responses.
Allow yourself to visualise a future that has all the things you hope for. You can do this using a guided meditation, through journalling, using crafts or with a coach like me. There is no right or wrong way provided you can get out of your own way; shifting your brain into hopes and dreams land and far away from inner critic territory!
A vision is your north star that guides you. Deliberately vague, it’s less about the ‘how’ and more about the ‘where’ and ‘why’.
Why do you want this thing?
Your ‘why’ should be aligned to who you and are the life you want to lead. Aligned to your values and your mission.
Need some help here? Try these earlier posts:
ii) Setting Intentions
Once you have your vision in mind, set intentions for how you want to show up, to feel, or be whilst pursuing it.This is about selecting ways of being that are essential when it comes to actualising what you want.
For example, if your vision is performance related (e.g. getting a promotion, being a better leader) your intention might be related to one of the traits essential in getting you there, such as discipline, focus, or proactivity.
Consider the gap that exists between where you are now and where you want to be.
The intention you set will revolve around the way of being that best describes what should change in order to get you to that end result.
You have to change a belief to make change happen and so I encourage you to dig deep and look at any limiting beliefs that might be holding you back from seeing this as possible. (Low confidence, imposter syndrome, procrastination, fear being the common ones).When you’re done sit with your intentions to make sure they are an accurate summary of what you want by the end of your goal's timeline (the year, the month, the week), then, you can get started on setting your goals and building the plan.
iii) Building a Plan
This is where we get into the how of goal setting.
Tangible, measurable and quantifiable (yes I know, they all mean the same thing but they are fun to say) actions and targets.
So if your vision involves ‘setting up a business’ and your intention is to be ‘balanced’ e.g. not working 24/7 your plan may include timelines about when you work and deadlines for tasks.
When building your plan focus only on what you can control.
Not only what you can control, but also where you have the most leverage. Leverage in this context meaning what would have the most impact if you truly gave it the right focus?
Full transparency, last year one of my goals was to hit 1k email subscribers. Today I’m still in the hundreds category. I cannot fully control this goal but I can control the output that will lead to this result.
The output might be consistency in posting, writing and researching quality content, and sharing posts on social media. Sticking to a schedule for these three things is what I can control. The number of people who ultimately subscribe, I cannot.
(I can ask you to share this newsletter with someone who might like it though!)
So as you design your plan, look not just at the outcome you want, but the process you will use to get there (the activities that will lead to you this result).
My internet friend Khe Hy speaks to this process of doing whatever has the most leverage, as doing what could constitute as ‘$10k work’.
$10k work he describes as:
$10,000/hour work is a peculiar cocktail of your industry, skills, passions, curiosities, relationships and vision. It’s planting important seeds for the future, yet you can’t just fill your day with it or the business wouldn’t move forward.
This sits in contrast to the ‘busywork’ we often get stuck in which he more like $100/hour.
So essentially — find goals that make sense for you and your business moving in the right direction for the kind of overall vision you have.
Goal setting is a mixture of an art and a science.
There are plenty of frameworks that exist out there. You can read my post on setting meaningful career goals to learn more about the SMART framework and setting process goals.
iv) Taking Action
So you’ve set your vision, intentions and plan according to what you most want.
Now it’s time to turn it into reality.
Do this by reviewing your plan to consider what the actions it leads to would be.
‘Create website’ as a step doesn’t tell you too much about what you’ll be doing or how long it will take. Better to break this down into ‘research web platforms’, ‘buy a domain’, ‘choose a logo’ etc.
So review your plan and turn what you’ve written into doing words (verbs) that tell you what you need to do. All your plans should have associated words and timeframes, and remember, be realistic. If you have four big goals for the year can you focus on one per quarter, for example.
Having the right tools can be helpful here. I got this beautiful 2021 diary as a Christmas present made out of stone paper (eco-friendly, tree-free and super smooth).
Taking action is also about setting yourself up both before you do the work, and during, for optimum success. Whenever you sit down to work on your goal (or stand up to run if your goal is run a marathon) you should know exactly what it is you are you doing in that moment.
Deciding to do the thing and doing the thing are not the same thing.
So decide up front what you will do (CEO mode) and then do it at a later point (employee mode).
Too many of us, myself included, often start their days deciding what actions to take and then expect to switch modes into doing it right off the bat. But when taking action, moving from thinking into doing can be a tricky transition.
TLDR: build your action plan before you begin to execute.
And last but not least - in fact most importantly - get some accountability for your plan. Get someone to check in with your progress who is on your side and can help prevent the good intentions from being just good intentions, but to turn into your reality.
Those are your four steps. Well done on reading…. now over to you to bring them to reality. Book a coaching consultation session if you’re in need of more support hitting your goals.
Thanks for reading.
