Archive for Your Goals
5 Tips for Keeping Your New Year’s Resolutions
Posted by: | CommentsYes I know it is the end of January and most people are no longer talking about their New Year’s Resolutions or their goals for the year. However, I have found that this is mostly because they are no longer applying themselves with the same level of passion to the goal that was there when they made the New Year’s Resolution. If you have a habit of setting resolutions at the beginning of the year and then abandoning them a few days or weeks later, now is your chance to try something a little different. Imagine how, by just trying something a little different, the course of your life could change for the better when you follow through on your resolutions until you achieved your goals!
Change Your Thinking
With a few basic tips, it is very possible to overcome your habit of giving up on New Year’s resolutions. First and foremost, avoid viewing your resolutions as something to aspire to and then neglecting them when they are seemingly less pertinent no interesting. New Year’s resolutions like goal setting can be enormously self-improving and enriching if you will just find a way to maintain them and their importance to you throughout the year.
Here are some tips for keeping your resolutions (and other goals you set as well):
- Make a commitment. In order for your resolutions and goal to be successful you must be willing to make a firm commitment to change. Believe in yourself, know deep inside that you can, and will, accomplish what you are setting out to do. When you give yourself such unwavering support from within, then you will strengthen that conviction and achieve what you seek.
- Choose New Year’s resolutions and goals that you genuinely want to achieve. Avoid picking a resolution or goal that someone else wants for you that you truly do not want for yourself. Then, make positive resolutions. Focus on all the positive aspects of achieving the goal.
- Share your “give up” goals and resolutions (I’m giving up smoking, giving up drinking etc.) with everyone. When all your true friends know what you are setting out to achieve, they can help hold you accountable.
- Share your “go up” goals (I’m going to be the number one salesperson, I’m going to be valedictorian) only with those that will be supportive. If you have competition for your “go up” goal you might not want to share that goal with those you are competing against.
- Plan ahead. Avoid choosing your resolutions at the last moment. Spending more time planning and preparing for your resolution goals will exponentially improve you results.
- Be Realistic. Achieving your goals relies heavily on continued motivation. By setting the bar too high you risk setting yourself up for failure, which can be profoundly de-motivating and result in a spiral in the wrong direction.
- Set your sights realistically, rather than too high. Do not get me wrong, you should give yourself a challenge, but not so much of a challenge that you cannot not believe in it and end up setting yourself up for inevitable failure. Also, remember you can break down larger resolutions into smaller goals – then focus on that smaller more realistic step!
- If this year’s resolutions are mimicking last year’s (or are very similar), step back and consider why last year’s resolutions faltered. Determine first what did not work last time and why. Then you can plan accordingly to avoid a repeat performance (or lack of performance).
- Write down your goals. When you put your resolutions into writing they become more concrete, you make them real. Put your commitment down on paper, then display your goals where you will see them daily (actually many times a day), in that written form. This way you will be frequently reminded of what you are striving to achieve this year.
- Map out your goals. Just saying the words on January 1st is only a small step. You need to take the next and most often forgotten step. You need to plan the how of achieving your goal. Write out a plan for each resolution that you are going for rather than just hoping for the best.
- Create flexible goals. Remember everything is not going to work out just the way you hope and plan, so be flexible and create flexibility within the goals that you set. Rigid resolutions can throw you off track when something does not go quite how you planned it (and it often will). Try to predict the obstacles you will face, and create a back-up plan for getting around over, under or through those obstacles.
Bottom Line
With a little bit of planning and preparation, you can keep and achieve your New Year’s resolutions. Just like any goal setting process, the key is to be realistic about your goals and the challenges you may face in trying to achieve them. The more realistic and flexible you are, the more likely you’ll be to achieve your goals.
Think Successfully & Take Action!
Tracy Brinkmann
Goals Setting, Rollercoasters and Screams
Posted by: | CommentsRollercoasters are a great past time of mine and in many way a great analogy for not just goal setting but for my life and I am willing to bet for your life and goal setting as well. You often spend lots of time, even hours more, than you would like, waiting for the moment that the ride actually begins (that first step towards your goal). Then comes that slow climb to the top, you heart racing in your chest, and WHOOSH you are off to the races. The first invigorating plunge into your major goal then right turns, and left turns, U-turns and screams combined with more climbs up and dives down. This happens over and over again with a couple of pauses before the next plunge back into your goal. But ONLY pausing long enough for you to just catch your breath then it hits you all over again until BAM, it’s all over.
For a little while your heart continues to race, your turn to your friend and excitedly share what just experienced, whether it’s perceived as good or perceived as bad, then you leave. Sometimes, you leave the ride (the life experience or the goal that you set) wanting more. Perhaps you want to do it again. You might even rush right back into line to do just that. Other times you leave the ride or the goal setting or life experience never wanting to do it EVER again – and so you don’t – then you become one of those left out of the experiences as the stand at the exit, pouting feeling left out, when see all the riders (goal setters) coming out exhilarated and wanting to do it all again. Has your life been a bit like that, even partly, at specific times? I know mine has!
First off, let me say it is not my goal to try and spin some sob story of being the product of an under-privileged household or abusive parents because honestly I was neither. While we did not attain riches by any means (and I mean that by the standard of dollars) – we certainly did not live in squalor either. I did not grow up with too many brothers or sisters; actually I was an only child. Let me take that one step farther by letting you know I was adopted, so I knew I was wanted, even when my parents didn’t make it a focused goal of showing it. My father proudly served in the US Army the bulk on my childhood so I gained the benefits of growing up all over the United States as well as spending years in Europe. Thus, I am unable to say that I grew up with a narrow focus of what types of people, personalities or cultures exist in our world. I came to know many of those culture, races, religions and personality types from a young age will into my adulthood.
Like so many others, even you perhaps, I gained a well-rounded and diverse set of experiences while growing up. Yet, I still made a series of poor choices during my early adult life. Choices that, as I look back with 20/20 vision, were the result of not knowing what I wanted, not knowing where I wanted to go and, basically, not having any kind of goal to look forward to in my life. Choices that put me in a place I never imagined I would be (and never want to be again). I experienced some dark times in my life (as I know many of my readers have – often far worse than mine). Times when I thought I would not see too many more years – or even days. Times when I thought the whole worlds goal out against me. Times when I felt like nothing I did was going to pull me out of the seemingly bottomless pit I was not only leaning over, but now I was clearly falling fall into.
It was during one of these dark times that I realized and set a goal to get focused on what I DID want. I was not longer going to let the tracks of someone else’s rollercoaster (their goals) suck me down another unknown, dark and unwanted tunnel filled with screams of fear and pain rather than the screams of joy and excitement.
This is the journey I want to take you on – the journey of facing off and breaking out of the grip forged by this type of thinking, the fear, the mental and success paralysis that it carries with it, and share with you the learning’s, the tips and the keys I used to flip my life from a fear filled rollercoaster ride of emptiness, to the goal of having a joyful, fulfilled life for me and those that I am about to touch.
The posts from this blog we be coming at you more frequently then you have experience in the past as I take you on and share this journey with you – I look forward to reading your comments, hearing about your experiences and seeing if you too can benefit from goal setting, rollercoasters (where you are in control) and screams (of joy!).
Think successfully & Take Action!
Tracy Brinkmann
One of Today’s TOP Motivated Coaches
Goal Setting Worksheets – More Benefits of Putting Goals on Paper
Posted by: | CommentsWell a few days ago I shared with you my post on Goal Setting Worksheets –Benefits of Putting Goals on Paper where I told you that time and time again you have heard me talk about the importance of goals setting and of course in that article I stressed that fact again, plus one more, the benefits of putting goals on paper. I told you that you need a road map or as I call it a Success Atlas. Goals are milestones along your Success Atlas and the benefits of putting goals on paper will be a clearer view of your road map to reach them. Putting your goals on paper enables you to walk you through the necessary steps for success.
In Goal Setting Worksheets –Benefits of Putting Goals on Paper I shared three benefits of putting your goals on paper and they were:
- Goal Setting Worksheets can help you see your future vista – like an eagle flying high in the sky you can see of the peaks, valleys and crevices that make up the terrain around you. From you future vista you can clearly see your goal like an eagle can easily see that meal – you both will be able to swoop in and snatch up your goal.
- Goal Setting Worksheets can help you covert your vista into your why. Why does the eagle swoop in from on high to snatch up its prey? For survival of course, or perhaps to feed it’s family. Either way the eagle knows why it has to achieve its goal. Do you? Do you know the whys for your goal? Putting your goal on paper will help you convert your vista vision into motivating whys.
- Goal Setting Worksheets will enable you to take your future visa (long term goal) along with your whys and break that big picture down into medium goals. The eagle when building a nest does not grab all the stick and leaves at once. It breaks down the building process into sections – you have to remember an eagles nest starts at four feet wide and three feet deep – the record nest known was twelve feet wide and fifteen feet tall. Now that is a big goal. So too do you need to break down your goal into manageable sticks and steps. Putting your goals in writing will help you ‘see’ the steps as you pen the goal out.
Okay enough of the cliff notes from the previous article if you want you can go read it for yourself here – Goal Setting Worksheets –Benefits of Putting Goals on Paper. Today I want to give your four more benefits of putting your goals on paper or more specifically on your goal setting worksheets.
- Goal setting worksheets will help you build your success atlas. When you sit down and put your goals on paper, breaking them down into smaller and smaller goals then into tasks and steps, you will begin to identify some interesting facts about your goal, fact which will include but will not be limited to:
- What skills you need to build or find
- What information you will need to acquire
- What funding (if any) you will need
- What specialized training you will be to get or freshen up if you already have it.
- Obstacles you might encounter – and possible solutions to avoid it.
- Any other requirements you will need
- Goal setting worksheets will provide you with a way to track how well you are doing thus providing you with some accountability to yourself. As we all know no matter how well we plan out our life, it always seems to have a way of throwing an unexpected turn in the road to success. These turns can cause you to lose sight of what you truly desire. Putting your goals on paper will provide you a place to come back and check frequently to get you back on the road to success and refocus you on your goal. If you are using my goal setting worksheets, you will have a place to check off your achievements; you will even be giving a place to score your daily performance – for you need recognize your accomplishments so the next time you are feeling like you are not making any head way you can come back to your sheets and see all the ground you have truly covered as witnessed by the person most interested in your goal… YOU! Oh, and if you are not getting the results you planned, then your sheets will give you quick notification of that and you can easily adjust your plans more forward.
- Goal setting worksheets and the success atlas they will provide will give you the clarity you need to keep moving forward. Time and time again I have seen the most positively intentioned person being down their road to success then reach the first turn, or more often the first obstacle and they fight and fumble their way through it. Then once on the other side they struggle to figure out what to do next. This causes them to loose time, depletes their energy stores and deflates their motivation, often to the point of not taking that next step. Putting your goals on paper will give you the clarity to know exactly what you are doing now and what you are doing next, then after that and so on until you reach your next milestone or the major goal.
- Goal setting worksheets will help you tackle the ugly beast known as procrastination. Breaking those large goals into smaller one, then those into even smaller one then those into steps and steps into tasks will enable you to build a realistic time frame for the accomplishment of each. One of the best ways to tame the beast of procrastination is by having clear time lines and deadlines of your goals, steps and tasks – they will provide the motivation that puts the beast of procrastination to sleep. All you have to do then is take action and hold yourself accountable to the deadlines you have set for yourself to reach the goal YOU deserve and desire.
Goal setting worksheets or just putting your goals on paper will enable you to bring out the dreams and desires you have bottled up inside of you. They can enhance your self confidence in your ability to reach your goal, keep you motivated and focused while trying to reach your goal, and finally will let you know when your falling a stray and help you get yourself back on track. Take your dreams and turn them into goals by planning them out. Dreams are good, dreams are great even. But dreams are not goals until you create your success atlas and begin taking the steps necessary to turn your heartfelt dreams into the life you dream, desire and deserve.
If you would like a few more great tips on goal realization and even get the personally designed goals setting works sheets that I mentioned in this post, CLICK HERE and I will happily send the Goal Realization Made Easy eBook to you right now. CLICK HERE now and get your copy today so you can start realizing all your goals as quickly as possible.
Think Successfully & Take Action
Tracy
Goal Setting Worksheets – Benefits of Putting Goals on Paper
Posted by: | CommentsTime and time again you have heard me talk about the importance of goals setting. Well, in this article I need to stress that fact again, plus one more, the benefits of putting goals on paper. You need a road map or as I call it a Success Atlas. Goals are milestones along your Success Atlas and the benefits of putting goals on paper will be a clearer view of your road map to reach them. Putting your goals on paper enables you to walk you through the necessary steps for success.
I mean if you think about it you really set goals every single day of your life. You set the alarm at the same time setting a goal of getting up to get to work, school or even the gym on time. You review your customer’s needs setting a goal to meet their needs, make money and grow your business. You can take these same small scale principles and apply them to goal setting on a medium or even much larger scale.
We all have desires and dreams we want to attain. We sit day dreaming while strolling through the park, walking down the beach or down a sidewalk in the sitting. Envisioning all the great and wonderful things we would like to have in our lives. Money, love, happiness, a thriving business, healthy and happy children the list can be as long as our imagination. But the problem is that alone is not enough to keep us motivated and focused to move forward – especially if we meet with resistance to meeting the goals we have set.
After going through ANY mental goal setting exercise you need to commit your goals to paper, putting them in a journal or writing them down on a goal setting worksheet. Write down all your thoughts (good and bad) about your goals – allow the pen to flow and begin to create a road map, a blue print and a Success Atlas that will become clear and specific, that will provide you with the focus, motivation and direction that you need. Putting goals on paper, creating your Success Atlas will the next step you need to take, give you the focus and motivation to take it, then show the next and the next and so on, and so on.
Not sold yet? Well how about when someone is getting married and has one of those big beautiful weddings. Do you thing the goal just happened? Of course it didn’t. Couples will spend on average one hundred hours planning a wedding. They will put down all their plans (goals) on forms (goal worksheets). Everything from what color the bridesmaids are going to wear, to who is sitting next to whom at the reception. Because something as simple as Uncle Irritating sitting next to Grandma No-Patience can ruin a wedding just as fast as planning and outdoor wedding during the wrong time of year. All these steps need to be thought through, mapped out and committed to paper.
Here is another interesting fact I have come to learn. Many of those same people that spend that hundred hours doing all the goal setting for their wedding, getting all the benefits of putting goals on paper, spend ZERO time setting goals for their lives. I do not want that to be you!
Goal setting worksheets are great tools for putting your goals on paper. They can help you through every nuance of the goal setting process. They can help you plan better and even aid in seeing those little things that you might have missed without them.
Here are three great reasons for using Goal Setting Worksheets and put your goals on paper:
- Goal Setting Worksheets can help you see your future vista – many people call this the big picture. Imagine if you were sitting on a high vista overlooking your perfect life. How would is look to you? Where will you be? What will you be doing? Putting your goals on paper can help you start focusing on this future vista and steer you along life’s path and many decisions so you can arrive there.
- Goal Setting Worksheets can help you covert your vista into your why. If you do not have a important why for reaching your goal(s) then the odds are weighted heavily against you. It is not enough to own the beautiful home you need to know why you want it. Is it a sense of security? A place you can come to escape from the hectic pace of the outside world? Know your why and your why and your odds of achieving your goal shift into your favor.
- Goal Setting Worksheet will enable you to take your future visa (long term goal) along with your whys and break that big picture down into medium goals. Then you can break those medium goals down into short term goals. Then turn your short term goals into tasks and those tasks into steps. I have had many a person say they have a goal to ear six figure incomes. A very attainable goal, but so many think they can reach that goal in a year or even less. Depending on where they are THAT could be far less attainable. They need to take this long term goal and break it down into medium goals – say half way from where they are to that big goal. Then break it down in half again, then again. Until it is at a point where they can look at the task and say to themselves “I can do that.” Then they just need to set about doing it.
These are only three reasons why you could be going through your goal setting exercises and just a few of the benefits of putting your goals on paper. There are many more and actually I will put a few more together in my next post. So, for now, sit down write your goals out, look at your vista vision, figure out your whys and start breaking that vista vision down into mid-term goals. Break those mid-term goals into short term goals. Break those down into task and the task into steps. Now schedule your steps and take action. You will surprise yourself and everyone around at how fast you take off towards the dreams you desire and deserve.
If you would like a few more great tips on goal realization and even get my personally designed goals setting works sheets, CLICK HERE and I will happily end the Goal Realization Made Easy eBook to you right now. CLICK HERE now and get your copy today so you can start realizing all your goals as quickly as possible.
Think Successfully & Take Action
Tracy
