Secrets to Success for Your Year Ahead

Photo by Matt Hall

Below are ideas for you to set positive goals for the new year: to work out targets that are truly yours, with achievable markers on the way, and a support structure to motivate yourself.

1. New Year Goals work better than New Year resolutions!

It’s good to set ambitious targets and strive for them. I’ve been hugely impressed with people that have set out to swim the channel or run multiple marathons and have the determination to complete it. The varied list of challenges achieved by others is very long! 

If we don’t have a target to aim for, we can be in danger of moving forward with only a vague focus and we won’t see our own success. When I started out in coaching, one phrase that Charles May, my coach, said to me was…

“If you aim for nothing – you’ll hit it every time!”

But I wonder if there might be an obstacle in using the word ‘resolution’ in achieving something next year? Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines resolution as ‘the act or process of resolving’. This suggests that there is something wrong with our current situation that we have to resolve, rather than simply looking at something as a goal that we want to achieve or improve on.

Resolving is problem-focused. Working for a goal is success-focused.  

And that’s not the end of this potential block to New Year resolutions! Similar words to resolution include: conclusion, decision, diagnosis, judgement, opinion and verdict. All of these are ‘thinking’ words – not ‘action’ words.

Any change of behaviour has to start with a thought and decision. But it has to actually be carried out in action.

Deciding to do something is only half the story - as anyone who has ‘decided’ to clear out their loft, but not done it, will testify!

You’re not ‘a problem’ to ‘fix’. You’re a person to cherish, to grow and to nurture.

 Tip 1 - Accept who you are right now - move away from problem thinking.

Instead, set yourself a true goal for next year. Something that you would love to achieve.

2. Defining your own unique goals

So, how do we set positive and realistic goals for ourselves? This may be more tricky than it first sounds, with a range of pitfalls or traps set for us!

When we’re impressed by others, we can try to copy their achievements. Or we can listen to others when they suggest what to do and how it might help us to be fulfilled and happy. Then we might agree to a target for ourselves that’s inspired by others - and not really suited to us. It’s not what we really want to do - and it won’t bring us joy! And so we’re unlikely to maintain our efforts and be properly motivated to achieve this goal. This makes sense as it’s not our goal – it’s someone else’s!

As a Life Coach, I help you to define your own goals for yourself and let go of those set by others that you no longer need. This is the first step – and the most important one. Because there’s no-one better than you to decide what will make you happy and fulfilled!

In coaching, we focus on your own unique perspective and what success looks like to you to move towards your goal.

Tip 2 – take time to reflect on what will make you happy and fulfilled.

And set yourself a true goal for next year that is yours, and will bring you joy!

3. Setting realistic markers that will stretch you

Once you have your clear goal in mind, it’s time to set markers on your way to that goal, at regular stages, that you can aim for. These should be challenging enough to stretch you and to help you develop. But they should also be realistic: these markers are objectives that are actually achievable.

Setting impossible markers can demotivate you. You can end up feeling that you’re not succeeding, and lose interest.

Tip 3 – set challenging but realistic markers on the way to your goal

4. The key to motivating yourself is being accountable!

One of the keys to coaching is that I help my clients to be accountable to themselves. I enable them to work out their own unique structure of support to ensure that they’re successful in reaching their goals. And the magic of this is that it becomes like a perpetual motion machine – they start to naturally motivate themselves as they go along!

 Tip 4 – set your unique structure of support to ensure your success

 Are you ready to take stock, create positive goals

that are truly yours, with achievable markers

and a structure of support?

Book a FREE Discovery call - click HERE.

As your coach, I will empower you, and help release you, to find your own freedom.

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Prioritise yourself!

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Watch out for next week’s blog –

‘Your Permission to Dream’

(or ‘If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?’)

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