I’m especially excited about this week’s conversation, because I love new year goal-setting! And I also love helping my clients (and community) set goals in a way that ACTUALLY gets them the results they deeply desire. No more falling off in February…no more just setting goals that *sound* good…no more letting yourself down.
Because what I know to be true is that if you want to finally make more money, or feel more confident, or lose that nagging 20 pounds, or (insert dream goal here) in 2024 you have to 2 things:
— Pick a strategy that works with how YOU work best
— Know exactly how to work your mindset to keep you accountable to your strategy
When you do both, you literally can’t help but reach (and often surpass!) your New Year’s goal
Strategy 1
No matter what your big goal is for 2024, I’m a huge believer in reverse-engineering the steps you need to take to get there.
For example, if you’re a business owner and want to make a specific income in 2024, you need to map out what you actually need to do each month/week/day in order to get there. Doing this will help you know how to price your offers, how often you need to sell, and what your weekly visibility and marketing strategy needs to look like.
The good news is this reverse-engineering exercise works with literally ANY goal. So if you want to make more sales or feel more confident or have a happier marriage or travel more or lose 20 pounds or (insert important goal here) – you need to work your way backwards, so you know EXACTLY how to get there.
And remember, some days your goal is going to feel really out of reach…you’re going to experience setbacks…you’re going to want to give up. Let’s just EXPECT that stuff to pop up, so we don’t make it mean something more when it does.
Your job is to lean on your mindset tools on the hard days. And if you don’t know what your mindset tools are, this is the perfect time of year to experiment with some to see which ones work best for you. For example: journaling, meditation, tapping, affirmations, prayer/spiritual practices, time in nature, music, distraction, etc.
The point is to know what to do on the hard days, so you feel better (always the point of mindset work), and so you can learn to ride out the inevitable setbacks without giving up on the goal or yourself.
Say it with me now – “The setbacks WILL come, but it’s just a problem to solve with mindset or strategy and NOT a sign that my goal is out of reach.”
Strategy 2
Let everything about your 2024 goal-setting be an experiment. Not in the sense that you’ll show up if you feel like it, but in the sense that you get to change your mind at any time about what you want and how to get there.
So often new clients come to our practice scared to set goals because they think they have a lousy track record with follow-through, or they don’t believe their goal is really possible, or they’ve experienced so much let-down around goal-setting before. Basically, they make goal-setting a zero-sum game where they’re either successful or not.
So my call to you today is to set up regular check-ins with yourself (or your therapist or a supportive family member) to evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy as you go. Is what you’re doing (or the way you’re doing it) working for your schedule and energy? Is there anything you need to adjust with your strategy, based on how things are going?
For example, I sit down at the end of every month to review my current goals (business and personal) to make sure they’re still important to me and to make sure my strategies are still working to get me closer to my goals.
Remember – you also have permission to change your mind about your goal. Permission to change up your strategy to reach said goal. Permission to accept that your current strategy isn’t working, and that it’s time to pick a new one. Your goal is still a realistic and worthwhile one, even when you realize your strategy isn’t working.
Here’s the thing – I’d be willing to bet that 90% of the goals we didn’t reach weren’t actual failures or unrealistic goals – we just didn’t evaluate and adjust our strategy along the way.
If you aren’t on track to lose 20 pounds by March 1, let’s not decide to throw in the towel or that you’re not capable of this. Let’s simply figure out why and where you need to adjust.
Let’s stop making our goals a zero-sum game. Let’s make achieving our goals inevitable, as long as we continue to show up and work a strategy that works for us.
Strategy 3
Finally, there’s no 5-step formula or cookie cutter strategy to reaching your goals – just the one strategy that works for YOU. I want you to bring this truth to your goal-setting for 2024. So as you’re mapping out your strategies for 2024, be sure you’re selecting strategies that work for YOU.
Don’t choose a strategy because you think you “should” (or someone told you you “should”). Don’t chase after the latest shiny object strategy if it’s not what floats your boat.
This is honestly another big reason people don’t achieve their goals. Because they’ve chosen a strategy that doesn’t work for them. For example, let’s say I wanted to lose 20 pounds and I picked running as my exercise strategy. I would honestly fail miserably (and quickly) because I hate running!
Make sure the strategies you choose work for your personality and your ideal lifestyle. When you do that, it’s 1,000% easier to show up consistently and reach those goals.
Our final piece of advice? DECIDE that what you want is totally possible for you. None of the strategy works anyway if we don’t put our belief behind it. And we’re so much more susceptible to setbacks when we doubt ourselves and our goals.
But when we’ve decided that what we want is possible…when we’ve decided that we have what it takes…when we’ve decided that our success is inevitable – we won’t give up on our goals (or ourselves) because we view setbacks to be a normal part of the process.
Don’t forget – reaching our goals is often faster and easier when we have support! Someone in our corner to help us stay accountable, adjust strategies, and help us believe in ourselves when we need that. If this sounds like the kind of support you’d love to have, contact us today to learn more about how to get started.
