Setting Goals for 2020? Stop! Do this first for great results

Hey! Can it really only be a few days away from 2020? Time to set goals…..again? So soon!

Seriously, I love setting goals for the New Year. It’s fun and optimistic and motivating to me. Gets my juices flowing.

I confess though, inevitably when I look back at my goals from the past year, I wonder why I bothered. I keep records of all my goals and if I glance over a decade, I can clearly see that I probably hit only about 20% of them.

So last year I tried something different. Sure, I still set my very specific financial and personal goals, but I also added a new ingredient that was bang on target and made everything else work.

Let me share.

Here is my process. I call this my Pre-Goal Game Plan—3 steps you need to take before you set your goals for better results.

So…looking back over the past year or more…

1) Think of an area in your life where you would prefer to have been more effective.

You didn’t hit that goal or make those needed improvements. Examples: Learning a new skill, getting your health in hand, getting along with family, making presentations, being more productive, and creating smarter work habits, etc.

2) Now, think of an area of your life where you are really successful; something you already do well and with total confidence.

Examples: An aspect of your job, cooking, a sport, languages, computer skills, etc.

Now, here’s the key that unlocks the goodies.

3) What is the difference between the two?

What do you do in the unsuccessful areas that differ from the activities you excel in? How do you behave? What are you saying to yourself and what do you believe about doing those activities?

What happens when things go wrong? How do you recover? When you know you are off-track or not achieving what you want, how do you respond—what are you thinking and feeling? What do you tell yourself?

So, in other words, what is the difference between the successful recoveries and the not so successful ones?

3) Now, imagine you are ‘mapping over’, i.e. transferring those components of success to areas where you aren’t achieving.

Just visualize yourself doing the desired activity and imagine you are applying all the thoughts, beliefs, and actions from things you do well. How would you be feeling? Behaving? Handling setbacks?

You know you can do it. You already have, just not with this specific thing.

For me, this process gave some astonishing insights.

For a long time I had been good at both preparing and delivering talks and trainings, which came from my 10 years’ experience as a business trainer.

But marketing? Sheesh. I was terrible at it. It required skill sets that I knew I didn’t have.

So I dug into the differences. When preparing for a talk I knew I had to put in a certain amount of work, I knew exactly what that work entailed, and I believed and was certain that it would pay off. I just had to slog away until the preparation was done.

If I found I didn’t like the direction it was taking, or I messed up with something, I would simply start again and persist until it was working for me. I knew I could do it.

For the marketing, on the other hand, if it didn’t work straight away and give me the results I wanted, I would throw up my hands and quit. Do something else. Why bother with this?

Successful marketers persist until they get it right. They adapt and adjust their tactics if they don’t work first time. They know what they need to do and are certain they will get results. Just like I do with my workshops and speech prep.

Conclusion? I need to believe that if I persist with my marketing, hang in there and just do the work, results will come. I also need to study up on it a bit more, and either farm out or learn to do the technical stuff myself, and have confidence that what I’m doing is the right strategy. Then get busy, just do it, as someone said, (Gandhi? Dali Lama? L’Oreal? Wait, Nike!) and not give up at the first obstacle.

You are your own best role model

In Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) we call this self-modeling. You know how you can be successful better than anyone else because you’ve done it before. You just need to dig deep into what you do well and compare it to areas you would like to improve.

Think of the implications. If we can model ourselves and de-construct our own successes and failures, we will have a powerful set of tools to achieve whatever we want in life.

For me, this has worked better than goal setting on its own. For my marketing I imagine I’m an experienced marketer who knows and believes in what she is doing. It really helps me to not start second guessing everything I’m doing. I now just get on with it.

But I still like to set goals, just adding in this new information about how to get there. Being more mindful about it.

I urge you to try it out. Just 3 steps. It’s actually fun. I’d love to know what you come up with. Contact me here.

I’ll talk some more next time about a great way to set your goals once you know where you need to change.

Have a great holiday and happy goal prepping!

Margaret

margaretnashcoach.com

If you would like some personal help with goal setting, or with mapping over your success qualities to your disappointments, just shoot me an email at margaretnashcoach@gmail.com. This is one of my favorite activities so I’d love to get stuck in with you.

Book a session with me now for the New Year and keep my current prices! They are going up in January 2020. The new prices for coaching are already on my website so contact me here margaretnashcoach@gmail.com for current charges that you can keep forever.