Goals: Everything You Need to Know
Today we are doing a deep dive into the goal setting and goal management process so you create and implement successful behavior and habit changes into your life!
Last week we talked about motivation and how to keep ourselves motivated, but this begs the question: motivated for what?
The answer: your goals.
The word “goal” is a way to reference any type of growth we want to occur. It’s a way to describe our ambitions, hopes, dreams, and desires. Whether it’s personal, professional, creative, or otherwise, goals are a fantastic tool that we can use to create a process and path towards achieving whatever it is we want. That being said, setting a goal is the easy part. The part that becomes difficult is managing our process and progress towards that goal and maintaining the discipline to continually come back to the behaviors and activities that bring us closer to achieving our goals. Essentially, we are changing our current behaviors and creating new habits that will help us create the future we desire.
How do we create new habits and change our behaviors to align with our desires for the future? It starts with creating and setting goals, as our goals will orient us towards which behaviors and habits are in need of implementation. Once we have decided which behaviors and habits to change or implement, we can begin the process of goal management, which becomes a matter of managing our expectations in relation to our perception of progress.
All that to say, let’s begin with the process of setting a goal.
Goal Setting
Ask yourself: What do I want?
Once you have answered this question, begin by imagining yourself achieving the end goal, the reward, the results, etc.
Ask yourself: How do I get from here to there?
Now that you know where you want to go, you can begin to envision how to get there. You can use Reverse Engineering to create a plan of action by breaking the process down into checkpoints. These are milestones or markers of progress that are not the big picture goal you began with, but rather are points where you can definitively see or feel your progress and is a necessary component to achieving your big picture goal
Ask yourself: What is the process of achieving my checkpoints?
Create SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time Bound) goals to develop a process and plan to achieve your checkpoints. This is the point where we begin to determine what behaviors need to change or be implemented. Essentially, we are determining new habits or modifying our current habits to orient ourselves towards achieving our goal. Here’s an example of a SMART goal: For the next three weeks, I will practice the piano for 30 minutes per day to play Clair de Lune without making a mistake. Let’s say the big picture goal is to play the piano in an orchestra. This SMART goal is specific in the piece of music you want to master and in what your process is (practicing it every day). It’s measurable in that you either play piano for 30 minutes that day or do not. It’s attainable in the sense that 30 minutes is a reasonable time commitment. It’s relevant to your macro goal because the orchestra you are trying out for is playing Clair de Lune in their upcoming performance. It’s time bound because you determined that this was your daily process for the next three weeks. At the end of the three week period you determined, you can create a new SMART goal and determine what process you need to use moving forward based on how successful you were in the three week period. SMART goals are a tremendously powerful tool for implementing new habits and behaviors and are the nuts and bolts of achieving our goals. I often refer to these as Process Goals, as they are where you determine what the process of goal attainment consists of.
Now that we know what we are working towards and have outlined the process, next let’s discuss how we manage our goals.
Goal Management
Once you have defined your goals (macro and micro), it’s time for action. Engaging in the Process Goals you create will bring you success and you will achieve all of the goals you set up for yourself!
Well, maybe. Hopefully! Except life happens. Things come up, life gets in the way, and sometimes what once was totally realistic and seemed attainable becomes just out of reach for us. This is where goal management becomes important. Just because we didn’t achieve all the success we had hoped for when we began doesn’t mean the entire goal needs scrapping, it might just need some readjusting!
Here’s are tips for managing your goals:
Ask yourself: How motivated am I feeling?
If you read the blog on motivation, you may remember that motivation is not a consistently reliable source of inspiration. Examine your intentions and determine your primary motivation source (intrinsic or extrinsic), and with that motivation in mind begin to think of ways to reignite the flames of motivation and inspiration. Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation require some form of fuel to feed the flames, but by knowing which motivation is your primary source you can best determine your inspiration needs. Understanding that motivation is fleeting and unreliable in your quest for discipline, have ideas for how to maintain your discipline when you are feeling unmotivated or disappointed with the progress you have seen. A tip I have for when you’re feeling extremely unmotivated: imagine what it would be like if you didn’t achieve your goal. What and how would you feel? You can definitely mine this bank of negative emotions to create inspiration and motivation for showing up again!
Ask yourself: What habits are working? What isn’t working?
Examine your habits and ask yourself if there are ways to better incorporate your habits, ways you can improve upon the habits you’ve already implemented, and also don’t be afraid to admit that a habit you may have started isn’t working for you or for your goals and that it may be time to try a new one.
Ask yourself: Are my expectations too high?
In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear has a graph that refers to what he calls the Valley of Disappointment, which is a space we tend to inhabit when we begin to make changes but our expectations of progress and our actual progress are not lined up. Perhaps this is a good time to examine how realistic your expectations are, and it may be a good time to reevaluate or reconfigure your timeline for success.
Ask yourself: Have I celebrated my success?
Pick a schedule in which you will regularly assess your progress towards your goal. This could be weekly, every other week, monthly, etc. Whatever you prefer. This is essentially built into our Process Goals, but make sure you create a schedule regardless. This is both cognitive (remind yourself that you’re doing a great job, tell yourself you are proud of all your hard work, build yourself up through positive self talk, etc.), and physical (you check a box that denotes that you have completed some part of the process, you reward yourself with a gift of some sort, etc.).
Goals are a blanket term to describe our hopes, dreams, desires, and aspirations in many areas of our lives. The process that I outlined today is the bedrock that we use in any behavior change coaching, and it is with the implementation of these tools that we can see real change and long term success. Remember, if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again. It is my hope that this outline gave you some clarity and tools to define and achieve your inspirations and aspirations!
With all my heart and precious time,
Noah
