New Year, New You: The Ultimate Goal Setting Strategy
Are you ready to finally get you're sh*t together?
Do you want to be the best version of yourself — or at least a somewhat better version of yourself? Maybe it’s the calendar reminding you, yet again, of just how fast time goes by. Or perhaps you’ve had a major life event that’s forcing you to reset and regroup.
Whether it’s your first time being really intentional about making change, or you just need a little structure to help you get back on track, I’m here with the ultimate goal setting strategy!
Change That Lasts
People set goals because they want to change something about their lives. However, achieving lasting change means that you change; including your beliefs about what’s possible for you, and persistently aligning your focus and behavior with them. Not perfectly! Persistently.
Creating lasting change is a three-step process: (1) prioritize what is most important, (2) emotionally invest in the change, and (3) develop sustainable systems to incorporate the change into a habit.
Choosing What to Change: Setting Great Goals
The key to setting great goals, is to choose things that will actually improve your quality of life. Don’t pick goals just because they sound good when you say it out loud! Take a moment to consider what will make your life better.
Need a little guidance? Life can be broken-down into the following categories:
Physical Health
Wealth
Love
Happiness
Connection
Contribution
Faith/Spirituality
If you’re like most people, there’s probably room for improvement in every one of these categories! Remember: your life isn’t a sprint to perfection - it’s a marathon! You don’t have to change (and in fact it’s impossible to change) everything that could be better, all at once.
You’ve got a few options in terms of setting goals. Depending on where you’re at in your life, you can either:
Focus on one of the seven categories mentioned, and pick one to three things you’d like to change.
Or, you can pick one thing from each of the seven categories you’d like to change.
Give yourself the grace of time and space to grow gradually, and to feel successful along the way. Begin with small changes first, so you can build the confidence and competence to tackle larger goals in the future.
Unrealistically high expectations don’t work for most people, and can just set us up for failure. The point isn’t to make a sudden and drastic change, then see how long you can stick with it! Rather, it’s best to start off with the idea of the big change you’d like to make, then slice it thinner and thinner, to make many small, specific, sustainable steps that you can work up to over time.
For example, if you have a big goal is wanting to go to bed by 9pm, break it down incrementally. Have “Goal 1(a)” be going to bed 20 minutes earlier than you do now, and after a week, shift to “Goal 1(b)” of going to bed 20 minutes earlier than that. Allow your sleep cycle to change gently, rather than expecting to go from having no bed time at all, to going to bed like a senior citizen over night!
When identifying your goals, seek progress, not perfection. Part of the ultimate goal setting strategy, is that you don’t just do it this one time! You’ll do it again and again as you evolve in each of the life categories!
What if there are a lot of great changes that could be made?
Don’t overwhelm yourself! Prioritize things that are a must for you as of right now — not a should. What does that mean? “Musts” are things that are urgent, compelling, and within the realm of possibility right now. “Shoulds” are things that aren’t very urgent or compelling.
For example: If you don’t have kids right now but plan to in the future, saving for their college fund is probably a should. If you’ve been diagnosed as pre-diabetic, better food choices is probably a must!
This next part is important: write down your list of goals, broken down into smaller steps over time, as appropriate. People who write their goals down are 42% more likely to achieve their goals than those who do not!
One of the most effective techniques that help you shed old patterns of behavior and develop new ones, is your mindset.
Mindset and Leverage
Therapists use a technique called Motivational Interviewing in order to help clients identify and strengthen their own internal motivation to make positive changes. Using open-ended questions, we can find your emotional leverage; the “why” that will help you persist when it’s hard, or help you get back on track when you inevitably slip.
Here are some of the questions you can ask yourself, in order to identify and strengthen your own internal motivation:
What would you like to see different about your current situation?
What makes you think you need to change?
What will it cost you (physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, socially, etc) if you don’t change? What will it cost over the course of years if you continue not to change?
How would your life be different 3 years from now if you committed to change today?
If you were to decide to change, what would you have to do to make this happen?
These questions force us out of the automatic, comfort-seeking thought process that allows us not to change. Those thoughts like, “oh, I’ll do it tomorrow…”, “well, it’s not that big of a deal anyway…”.
Psychology 101 teaches pain and pleasure are the ultimate motivators, and asking yourself these types of questions shift our perspective. Avoiding change now might be more pleasurable than the pain of changing… But continuing to prioritize short-term pleasure leads to even more pain in the future.
It takes a lot of emotional energy to do hard things, like changing. Having goals with no emotional leverage is like having a car with no gas!
Once you’ve chosen the changes you’d like to make based on the seven life categories, ask yourself the motivational interview questions. Write out what you come up with in detail. This could even take the form of a letter to yourself. However you do it, keep this, and revisit it often as a way to keep you focused when the initial excitement and motivation wears off.
Which it definitely will…
Develop a System That Supports Your Success
When I asked you earlier if you wanted to get your sh*t together, I mean it — you have to want something more than your current comfort or coping tendencies!
The excitement of planning to make change will get you started; but will only last so long. Will power will only get you so far. Systems are necessary to help you sustain change over time.
If you’ve tried to make this change before, be honest with yourself about what got in the way, and address those obstacles first. It can be helpful to ask the following questions:
What will help make it easier for me to succeed?
Is there any preparation or planning that can help me succeed?
What will make this process more enjoyable for me?
Does this change need to be every day right now, or can I begin to focus on it just a few days a week?
One helpful tip is “stacking” the change you’d like to make onto existing habits/rituals. This can make it easier to remember and execute the new change, because you already have momentum with something else. For example: If you love having a cup of coffee in the morning, stack your new habit of reading the Bible with it.
Another helpful tip is separating goals/tasks/rituals to certain days of the week. This can give you some much needed rest between making change and staying the same. For example, if your goal is to start writing, don’t expect to suddenly be great at writing every day! If you like alliteration like I do, develop the system of “Writing Wednesdays” where you save all of your writing focus for one day. Or “Money Mondays” where you check-in on your financial goals.
Work With Your Natural Tendencies
It’s more beneficial to exploit your strengths, rather than try to improve your weaknesses. You’ve been you all your life. You know what works and what doesn’t work for you.
If you tend to forget things, make a list, have visual cues or set alarms on your phone to remind you.
If you’re lazy when it comes to following through, create incentives to make it more appealing, and painful consequences to not following through.
If you’re most creative at night, don’t try to force inspiration to come in the morning.
If you watch too much TV and can’t stop yourself, take the batteries out of the remote and hide the remote somewhere inconvenient to get to.
Don’t fight against yourself, work with who you are, to help current you become future you.
Feed Your Focus
Once the initial excitement and motivation wears off, we can’t expect it to show up again without an invitation!
We need to feed our focus to keep it alive! You can do this by overwhelming your hesitation and procrastination. Deliberately surround yourself with things that inform and inspire you to keep going. Incorporate media that keeps you focused on what you’re trying to accomplish and why.
This could look like:
Subscribing to YouTube Channels that teach and inspire your desired change (Like mine!)
Listening to Podcasts and audiobooks
Reading articles and blogs
Having your goals posted prominently in front of you; whether it’s on the wall, a vision board, or as the wallpaper on your phone and computer.
Be creative! Whatever you use to feed your focus, make it very easy to get to. If you’re using apps to support your change, put them on the first page of your phone. Make your new behaviors easier to get to than your current dysfunctional behaviors.
Planning & Pacing Progress
As you’ve noticed, proper goal setting isn’t just writing down a goal and calling it a day!
Review what you wrote in terms of your mindset, emotional leverage and goal list on either a daily, or weekly basis, as appropriate to your goals. This way, you can stay on track, celebrate success and reflect and re-strategize on struggles.
Be Forgiving and Flexible
We live in a fallen world, and as much effort as we put into planning, we are still imperfect human beings. Don’t be discouraged after a tough day. Don’t beat yourself up for not getting things immediately and consistently right. Learn why it didn’t work, and incorporate changes to help you succeed the next day.
Remember that your goal is progress and persistence, not perfection. If you screw up today, so what? Mistakes don’t make you a failure; however, failing to learn from mistakes does.
When you review your progress, notice if what you’re doing isn’t working, and adjust accordingly until you find the way that works for you. Do this process until you get the right system. Once the system is made, things get a lot easier for you!
Upon reviewing your progress, maybe you realize that the initial goals you set aren’t as important, realistic, or sustainable as you initially thought. Guess what? You can change your goals too! For example: Stretching every day may sound like a great goal, but you may find that stretching 3x a week can feel just as good without the sacrifice of time for other interests.
Your goal is to create changes that make you feel better, not worse. Otherwise — what’s the point?
Where Can I Find More Help?
If you’re looking for a place to gain clarity on your goals, improve your mindset, and tap into the power of your emotions, therapy could be a great resource for you! You can start by clicking the button below to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation with me, and see if we’d be a good fit!
Maybe you aren’t fully ready for therapy yet — That’s okay too! Click the button below to check-out my YouTube Channel, Tips from a Therapist, where I offer some of my best tips on how to improve your relationship with yourself and other people. Once you get to my channel, click Subscribe!
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The more you know, the more you grow!
