“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.”  – Henry Ford.

So we are a few weeks into the New Year and I wonder how many people have already given up on some resolutions and goals that they set for 2018. How are you doing with your personal goals and aspirations that you set for this year?

Some people have objectives and goals professionally but don’t always have goals for their personal life. Setting personal goals ensure that our time and energy is focused on what really matters. They help us to fulfil more of our potential and help us to grow, develop and experience new things.

Achieving them helps us to feel a great sense of accomplishment. Goals don’t have to be massive. They can relate to health and fitness, hobbies, finance, personal development or leisure etc.

When it comes to goal-setting, many people have good intentions and genuinely wish to accomplish what they set out to do. Unfortunately they get overwhelmed by the busyness of life, get distracted and lose focus. As a result, they give up on their goals and dreams too soon.

If you would like to be better at devising and achieving personal goals, here are a few goal setting tips which are taken from my book, Be First Class:

Be specific about what you want to achieve

Firstly, decide what you would specifically like to achieve and by when. For example, “to lose weight” is a goal but a better goal would be “to lose one stone in weight by June 30th this year.”

Get clarity on your why

Determine what is driving and motivating you to want to achieve this goal and why it’s important to you. Getting clear on your motivations upfront helps you to maintain focus and remind you why you must persevere when the going gets tough and you feel like quitting.

Get clear on your current position

It helps to have an honest and objective assessment of your starting position. Consider any action you have already taken or remind yourself of any personal experience and knowledge you can call upon. This helps you to quantify how realistic the goal is and what needs to be done.

Clarify any obstacles you need to overcome

Obstacles may be personal limitations or limiting beliefs. They could be external factors such as a lack of time, money, knowledge or skills. By clarifying what needs to be overcome it helps you to start to think about ideas and solutions.

Determine what support and resources you need

Clarify what personal strengths, people or resources will help you to accomplish your goal. Sharing our goals with others can establish an accountability mechanism. An accountability partner can check in on progress and provide encouragement or challenge if required. Be honest with yourself and decide if you need to ask for some help or support.

Commit to action steps

Establish clear action steps which you are 100% committed to. You may find it useful to break large goals down into smaller chunks. This helps to prevent a big goal feeling overwhelming. Feeling in a state of overwhelm can lead us to procrastinate and stop us from making a start. These feelings can also lead us to quit pursuing goals prematurely.

How will you celebrate?

Determine at the outset how you will celebrate and reward yourself when you achieve your goal. This provides an added incentive to achieve a stretching goal and keeps you focused and motivated. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking about what we haven’t done or achieved and not take any time to celebrate and reward ourselves when we complete something that we set out to do.

This week, why not take a few moments to think about what action you can take to help you achieve your personal goals with greater ease in 2018.

To arrange a free no obligation consultation, please contact Stephen Pauley via the contact form or by e mail: Stephen@befirstclass.co.uk