A new year often signifies the perfect opportunity to set your goals for the year ahead.
Check out our New Year “Twenty SevenQueen” Competition here.
Whether a regular ‘goal-setter’ or not, there is real merit in setting goals leading to a higher quality life – greater motivation, feelings of positivity and success and an all-round inspiring lifestyle as you tick wonderful goals off your 2017 to-do list.
There can be conflicting advice when it comes to goal setting. Some people keep their goals to themselves, not telling anyone and quietly working away in the background. Others shout their goals from the rooftops, claiming the more people they tell, the more accountable they will feel when working at achieving their goals.
I am going to let you in on a little secret – there is no ONE ‘right’ way for setting and achieving goals. However, in my time as a wellness coach, there ARE some habits all of my successful clients have had in common when it has come to absolutely smashing their goals – ranging from leaving jobs for dream careers, travelling the world and regaining their physical and mental health.
Here are a few of their top traits:
Get clear about what you WANT
Make sure your goal is as crystal clear as it can possibly be. Rather than “I want a new job”, include SPECIFICS about the job you are looking to find. For example, I had a client who wanted to leave her current role.
She didn’t know exactly what she wanted to find, however there were TRAITS she wanted her new role to embody. So, her goal was “In 12 weeks I will have found a new role, at a company that inspires me, with a short commute and no need for public transport, allowing me a life outside work, with a salary of $x”.
Sure enough, 12 weeks later, she was walking into her brand-new role which ticked all of these boxes.
Write it down – every day
Keeping a journal is an important way to really stay committed to your goals. By writing down the goals you want to achieve, and reflecting on these regularly, you will be able to monitor your thoughts around these goals – because here’s another thing – they might just change! A few months after setting a particular goal, you might find it isn’t for you anymore.
That is OKAY! But unless you are committed to showing up and putting in the work towards achieving these goals every day, then it is easier to forget them and push them to the side. Journaling keeps you accountable and helps crystallise ways around HOW will you achieve your goals.
Vision boards
If you aren’t entirely sure what your goals are for the year ahead, vision boards are a wonderful way of discovering what it is you are passionate about. Take some time to sit with a heap of magazines, or scroll through inspiring pages on Instagram, and notice the images and words that capture your attention. Collate a Pinterest board, or cork board, of these images and notice an underlying theme form.
A client of mine, after working on her vision board, realised that it was a dream of hers to work at a retreat in Hawaii. Literally 1 month after this realisation, she had left her secure corporate role and is moving to live and work in Hawaii for 3 months this year.
Set goals in the POSITIVE
Words are SO powerful. Too often we set ourselves up for failure by setting goals in the negative.
For instance, “I won’t eat chocolate anymore” should instead be “I will eat less chocolate next week than I did this week.”
Setting positive goals allows much greater chance for success and is a far gentler approach, with limited pressure. Look at what you WILL do rather than what you WON’T.
Set yourself up for SUCCESS not failure
Too often we set ourselves these intense, crazy goals, knowing in the back of our mind we will never reach them, then beating ourselves up about it when we don’t because we feel like a failure. Goal setting should be fun and
ACHIEVABLE! Yes, there should be an element of challenge, but not so much to be causing you stress every day.
Set small goals, in weekly blocks, rather than massive 1-year goals, and see how good you feel when you achieve these. CELEBRATE when you achieve the goals that were more challenging.
You can read more about stress management here.
Enlist the help of a coach
Sometimes goal setting can feel a bit much, and you just need someone to walk you through the process, which is where the guidance of a coach comes in handy.
Face Plus Medispa offers goal setting and accountability sessions with their in-house wellness coach, Hollie Azzopardi.
Make an appointment with our wellness expert:
Bondi Beach: 02 8897 0077
Email: [email protected]
