I have goals …. hand me the ball….
No, not the football type of goals ……
These goals are the ones that we all want to achieve in our lives. Every year, many of us spend time making New Years Resolutions and in fact, this is just another name for goal setting. Whether it be to eat healthier, exercise more, learn something new or changing jobs, each of these requires goal setting and ensuring that we can achieve our goals.
Quite often when we set a goal, if we don’t make it achievable and manageable, we end up losing sight of it before too long and the goal turns into a ‘one day’ moment.
“One Day I will get that promotion I would love so much to achieve”.
Unfortunately “One Day” doesn’t have a timeline attached to it and it might not arrive easily or quickly without a clear way of managing your goals.
Since we’re now in March, we’re already through one quarter of 2015. How many of you have given up on goals that you set at the beginning of the year? Who of you are still on track? We’d love for you to tell us about where you are with your goals. We still have nine months left of the year so we’re spending this month focussing on keeping us Girl Geeks on our goal achievement track.
Identifying goals
When goal setting, it is wise to understand exactly what your goal is and why you want it. To have clarity around your goals will help you to identify clear timelines and put well defined plans in place to achieve your goals. It is recommended that you write your goals down. There are many ways that you can write your goals down but ensure that it is somewhere that you will look at regularly.
Here are a few suggestions:
- Keeping a diary – this Goal Diary is perfect for recording your goals and looks lovely. It’s a great size to keep in your bag so you can regularly review your goals.
- Building a Vision Board – This Girl Geek has big goals and to keep me motivated and inspired in the brightest and darkest days, I have built a vision board that I look at regularly. It allows me to see what the end goal will be and keeps me motivated and reminded of the things I am seeking to achieve.
I keep my vision board on Pinterest since I am a very visual person and this allows me to view it whenever I want via the Pinterest app on my phone. I am sharing it with you since making your goals public means you are more accountable for them. My vision board is somewhat materialistic. Don’t judge me on that.
Other people make their vision boards the traditional way with cardboard and cutouts of images that they want to show for reaching their goals. Often the board is kept somewhere that it can be seen every day such as in the bedroom, the bathroom or by the kettle so that you can start the day reaffirming your goals and seeing what you can achieve.
- Be Accountable – Put your goals out there and share them with your friends, family, colleagues or even strangers via social media. I’ve heard quite often that what you put out into the universe is what you get back and part of me wants to think that there might be a greater force that can make this happen but when I come back down to earth, the simple fact is if you tell others what you are doing or planning to achieve, most of the time they will provide you with support and guidance but also it means you are accountable so it is a motivational aid to keep you driving towards achieving your goals.
When you are identifying your goals, it’s very important to understand why you want to achieve them. Take time to gain clarity about not only what it is that you want to achieve (that’s often the easy part) but most importantly why. In many cases, achieving goals can take time and effort so if you’re putting yourself through something new, you need to understand why you’re doing it. This will bring you closer to achieving your goals.
In our next installment of Goal setting and achieving, we will be discussing more about clarifying and managing our goals. We will provide you with some methods to clarify and understand your goals and provide some recommendations of people and material that can help you.
Until then, we’d love for you to leave a comment here, sharing with us what your goals are and also any tips and methods you use to achieve your goals.
We’re discussing goals over on our Facebook page and would love for you to join the conversation there also.