Did you make New Year’s Resolutions this year? How are they working out for you?
Perhaps you made a decision that this year you would exercise more, spend more time with your family, or spend a certain number of hours per week working on your business instead of just in it. And perhaps despite your best intentions, that is not working out the way you’d hoped.
Maybe you’ve had less time to achieve your goals than you thought. Perhaps a vacation, or having children home for the holidays, has messed with your schedule, and the start of the year was busier than expected.
Is it possible you are making excuses why you haven’t achieved your goals, rather than making time to accomplish them?
Our values are reflected in our behaviour. We make time for what’s truly important to us. And success requires prioritising those things that will help us achieve our goals.
Perhaps you’ve set a goal to exercise for 30 minutes every morning but you’re hitting the snooze button and sleeping in rather than doing a workout. Or in your business you’re so caught up doing things you could delegate, that you don’t have time to work on your business plan.
So how do we ensure that we follow through in achieving our goals?
One way is to ensure that the WHY of our goals is strong enough to support the how and thewhen.
Think about a goal you set for this year. Then ask yourself: WHY is achieving this goal important to me? What will achieving this goal mean to me? What else will achieving this goal allow to happen?
If you set a goal to exercise for 30 minutes four mornings a week, for example, you may write: “Achieving this goal will improve my health and fitness giving me more energy for work and family. It will allow me to start the day energised, promote better sleep at night, and provide “think time” before the busy-ness of the day sets in. And sticking to a plan and achieving my goals makes me feel good about myself, and improves my confidence in my abilities in other areas of my life.”
Then consider what affect not achieving this goal will have. You could start by reversing the above … less energy, less clarity for work, more stress, and the disappointment you feel when you’re not taking time to do what’s important to you.
When you’re setting your goals, clarifying your WHY is as important as deciding the how and the when. When the how and the when become challenging, your WHY will pull you through.
We make time for what’s important to us. Reinforce WHY you want to achieve your goals and taking action to achieve them will become easier.
Try it and let us know how you go.
Posted by julianne, 31/1/12