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Revisiting Your January Goals

We all have the best of intentions each January to make goals and accomplish great things but goals (resolutions as we sometimes call them) are only as good as the follow through and follow up. There's no point in setting goals in January and then never looking at them again. Otherwise they're not goals - they're empty statements that are bringing you no closer to the success you are looking for. There are usually some reasons why the goals sit unfulfilled on the fridge where you posted them with good intentions.

We all have the best of intentions each January to make goals and accomplish great things but goals (resolutions as we sometimes call them) are only as good as the follow through and follow up. There’s no point in setting goals in January and then never looking at them again. Otherwise they’re not goals – they’re empty statements that are bringing you no closer to the success you are looking for. There are usually some reasons why the goals sit unfulfilled on the fridge where you posted them with good intentions. Here are some of the things that hold us back from our goals:

Fear

What forms can fear show up in? Fear of being ridiculed. Fear of failure. Fear of the unknown. I’m not sure there’s another 4 letter word that gives us as much trouble as fear. In some ways fear is good as it gives us the thrill during adventure that we as humans seek. But if you can’t get past the fear to go on the adventure, then everything you want is on the other side of fear and out of your reach. So put you’re grown up pants on and climb over fear!

Lack of Direction

Sometimes we have goals and we do not know where to start. We can see the end result but we do not know how to get there. A lack of direction is one of the reasons we set goals in the first place but maybe yours weren’t specific enough. Take some time to make specific goals and then take action. If your goal was to change your marketing, go on line and type in how to change your marketing. All actions create a reaction and if you do nothing, then nothing is going to happen.

Procrastination

We have all procrastinated in our lives. As a business owner you cannot procrastinate. When you stand still and do nothing, so does your business. As a business owner if you are procrastinating you are holding back your businesses potential. One way to get around procrastination is to set a deadline for your goal. Just setting the goal isn’t enough. If you set a deadline, and better yet, involve someone else to hold you accountable for that deadline, you are more likely to take action.

Healthy Mind Traffic

Most new business owners dread the 3am conference call. That time where you wake up thinking about all the things you need to do, fix, create, connect or tweet about. If that’s not bad enough, you also get that little voice at the back of your brain feeding you negative thoughts about failure and catastrophe. Add a family in and you’ve got enough traffic for three people. At this point you need an air traffic controller to keep all the noise down. Why? Because all that mind traffic can be more damaging than fear, lack of direction and procrastination combined. If your mind traffic is out of control, take the time to write it all down. A great way is to divide the paper in to columns labelled outcome, action and who/how. What needs to be accomplished, what action are needed to get it done, who can do it and how will it be accomplished and give a deadline. This will give you actionable items that you can be proactive about and it is a great way to convert that mind traffic in to positive action for your business.

How to overcome the above and get focused on our goals:
  • Check your goals frequently. January is a good place to start and then every 3 months see if they still make sense.
  • Organize them in order of priority
  • Take one goal at a time and start to add dates to them, giving yourself deadlines to when you know you can complete each goal.
  • Be realistic, make sure that you are giving yourself enough time to complete each goal/task
  • Maybe give yourself one day or a half a day a week just for working on your goals
  • Stay focused, it is easy to find distractions from what we need to do, but do not be that person. Get what needs to be done and then move
  • on.
  • Healthy Look at the bigger picture and how your goals effect that, be excited about it.
  • Ask for help, you are not superman or wonder woman, do not be afraid to ask for help.
  • Delegate, if you have employees, spread the work around, it will lighten your load and get things done faster.

HAPPY GOAL GETTING!!!

Namaste!