January Dreaming and Goal Setting
This is the time of year when we are all highly motivated, we’ve just spent the best part of two weeks partying, eating lots of chocolate and lounging around in our onesies. By the time January comes around most people are ready to attack it with a renewed sense of vigour, new year, new you! It’s a time of goal setting and putting plans into action, tackling all those things you said you were going to do “after Christmas”. But how many of us can really keep it up? Going to the gym 4 days a week, getting up early to work on our journals, spending an hour a day “on” our businesses.
One of the biggest issues in sticking with our resolutions is that we are often trying to make lots of massive changes all at the same time, and once we start getting tired and middle Jan blues set in our enthusiasm starts to wane. This is why it’s much more realistic to not just set goals, but to then split this into much smaller and manageable steps. So rather than say you are going to give up chocolate for life, or treble your turnover in the next week, think of your ultimate goal and work backwards to see what it is you need to do today that will help set you along the right path.
Think of it a bit like a recipe (can you tell I like food!). You know what you want to the end result to look like, so what are the ingredients you need to make it happen, and how will use best use those ingredients to achieve your goals. By breaking it down into manageable steps over a realistic period of time you can easily integrate those steps into your daily routine. Before you know if you will have achieved that goal and be ready to set the next one!
Ways to stay motivated:
1. Every time you achieve one of the steps along the way give yourself a treat – it could be half hour of brainless TV, a lie in, or whatever else it is that will help to motivate you. Just make sure that it doesn’t detract from your goal though.
2. Give yourself accountability – tell everyone what your goal is, post it on Facebook, tell your family and friends and ask them to question you if you give up on it.
3. Visualise what it will be like to achieve your goal, spend time thinking about it every day. Try and focus on the end result and how good it will feel rather than the hard work you need to put in to get there.
4. Remember, it’s supposed to be hard, it’s OK to have a wobble now and again. If it was easy it wouldn’t be challenging and it probably wouldn’t be on your list of goals. Go have a scream and then get back on it!
