Tips for Goal Setting That Will Help You to Crush Any Goal
I’m curious if this scenario sounds familiar to you. It’s a week before New Year’s Day, and you decide that this is your chance. With a brand new year and a clean new slate, it’s now time to achieve that goal.
Then, a week later, you find that your motivation has wholly diminished. Before I learned some very valuable tips for goal setting, that is exactly what happened to me.
According to research, only 8% of people achieve their New Year’s Resolutions!
Dear reader, you’re not the only one that has set goals before and then reneged on them. I know letting yourself down hurts, but forgive yourself and understand that you are human.
Start implementing the following goal setting tips today so that you can create the momentum to achieve any goal that you’ve set for yourself.
Tip 1: Set Goals That Excite You
I believe that nobody is truly lazy. If you’re somebody that’s “lazy,” you’re not truly lazy. You simply don’t have goals that excite you enough.
Have you ever had a burning feeling to achieve something in your life, such as getting your driver’s license or buying a new T.V.? That’s the sort of drive and motivation that I’m talking about here.
Use the Pleasure Principle to Ramp Up Your Drive & Motivation
Perhaps you have a goal that you do want to an extent, but you can’t seem to muster up enough drive to get started and follow through.
That is where the Pleasure Principle comes in, which I learned from my mentor Tony Robbins.
If your motivation and drive tank is running on low, you can utilize the Pleasure Principle to shoot them up into the stratosphere.
What is the process for associating a lot of pleasure with your goal? By using Empowering questions.
By asking yourself empowering questions, which I recommend saying aloud, you’ll instantly conjure up a massive amount of drive and motivation that will fuel you towards your goal.
Here are some empowering questions to ask yourself:
- What will be the rewards of achieving this goal?
- Why do I want to achieve this goal?
- How will achieving this goal help me in each area of my life?
- How will achieving this goal help the people in my life?
I recommend asking yourself all of those questions. Take your time and ponder the reasons why you want to achieve your goal. If you can’t find reasons that excite you, dig deeper.
Work out and get yourself in a positive state. Maybe go for a long walk. Do whatever you have to do to dive deep into your soul and elicit those reasons for achieving your goal.
Tip 2: Get Accountability
One of the best tips for goal setting that I’ve ever learned is to get a coach. A terrible mistake that you could make with goal setting is to think that you can do it all independently. That is your ego talking to you.
If you want to take your goals to the next level, you need to detach yourself from your ego and be willing to get help from other people.
Sure, you can be accountable only to yourself, but that poses a problem. If you slack off with your goal and stop taking action, the only person that knows about it is yourself.
When you’re only accountable to yourself, it’s so easy to let yourself off the hook. I’ve done it many times!
Accountability Method #1: Post Your Goal On Social Media
The easiest, quickest, and inexpensive way to get accountability is to post your goal on social media. Doing that alone has created a tremendous amount of drive within me to take action on my goal.
I recommend posting your goal in multiple places and on multiple platforms.
The more you post your goal to potentially thousands of people, the more of a fool you’ll look like if you don’t achieve your goal. That’ll create a lot of drive within yourself.
Accountability Method #2: Hire An Accountability Coach
The second accountability method is to hire an accountability coach. Hiring a personal coach is easier and cheaper than ever before. You can sometimes find a great accountability coach in your local area.
Or, as I do, you can hire an accountability coach online. A great website to find an accountability coach is coach.me.
I recommend both methods to get accountability. When your money and respect from others is at stake, it’ll take your drive to a whole new level.
Tip 3: Prep Your Mindset
I hate to tell you, but if you’re somebody that keeps being lazy with your goals, you have some flaws in your mindset. That’s okay; it all starts with awareness.
If you aren’t achieving your goals, you need to become your own Sherlock Holmes for your brain. You have to dig down deep and identify the psychological barriers that are holding you back.
The most common reason for not setting and achieving goals is Limiting Beliefs.
If you’re somebody with limiting beliefs (like most people), check out this blog post here by my life coach, Stefan James, on how to identify and overcome them.
There, he’ll walk you through everything that you need to do to destroy your limiting beliefs once and for all.
You also need to make sure that you’re constantly investing in books, seminars, programs, etc. That will support a successful mindset.
If you haven’t already, start immersing yourself in the books and programs of highly successful people daily.
In contrast, you’ll begin to adopt a successful people’s mindset, which will transform your entire life over time.
Tip 4: Always Get Back On Track Quickly
Many of us set exciting goals initially, but after gaining some momentum, we stop. Then after stopping, we beat ourselves up and get into a state of learned helplessness where we think to ourselves, “Why even try?”
Nowadays, if I get off track with a healthy habit or behavior, I get back on track pretty quickly.
In the past, it often took me a week or even longer to get back on track again! You would think that the feeling of shame with getting off track would motivate you to take action, but the opposite is true.
Way too frequently, we beat ourselves up for being imperfect. Remember that you are a human being. Not even a single human being on this planet is 100% consistent with any given goal.
I don’t care how perfect that you think somebody is. With that said, aim for a 90% or higher success rate with consistency.
Stop beating yourself up every time you miss a workout or indulge in a portion of unhealthy food. Doing so will only perpetuate the negative behavior and keep it alive.
One of the most excellent tips for goal setting is to acknowledge the mistake, forgive yourself, and then get back on track.
When you adopt the “successful imperfection” mentality and stop beating yourself up so much, you’ll find that your success rate with any habit or goal goes massively.
Tip 5: Reward Yourself for Tiny Progress
“What gets rewarded gets repeated” — Tony Robbins.
Creating a reward system is one of the best tips for goal setting that you can implement in your life. The more you reinforce positive behavior, the more likely you are to repeat the positive behavior.
Human beings have a reward system in their brains that are very similar to animals. There’s an excellent book called Don’t shoot the dog by Karen Pryor. In Pryor’s book, she explains how humans are very similar to animals when their brains’ reward system.
When you train a dog and give it a treat every time the dog successfully does the trick, you reward him. As a result, he masters the trick or behavior.
We give ourselves a massive dose of pain for failure or for not following through all too often.
While I believe that it’s perfectly fine to give yourself a dose of pain to get back on track, you need to focus even more on rewarding yourself.
Create a reward system for yourself for tiny successes.
Reward yourself for small wins, such as drinking a glass of filtered water every morning.
Start celebrating every positive action that you take towards a goal. Doing this will crank up your motivation and make you addicted to taking action towards your goal(s).
Tip 6: Enjoy the Process
It’s essential to remember to enjoy the process of achieving your goal. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that reaching your goal will make you happy.
While it’s excellent to have increased happiness from achieving your goal, it’s important to remember that no goal will make you happy long-term.
I’m sure you’re familiar with celebrities, such as Jim Carrey, that reached a significant award or level of success but then found that they weren’t fulfilled after all.
It’s all about feelings. If you believe that achieving a goal will give you lasting fulfillment, it’s because of your deceitful ego. If you want to enjoy the journey, you need to become mindful and live in the present moment.
I’m a huge Eckhart Tolle fan, and I highly recommend all of his books, such as The Power of Now. In his book, he teaches how to live fully in the present moment.
Start including some daily activities that relax you and put you in the present moment.
It’s great to achieve, but what’s the point of constantly striving to achieve when you aren’t enjoying the gift of life. Remember, each day is a gift and should not be taken for granted.
Start taking long walks in nature, doing art, or whatever grounds you into the present moment. You deserve to feel the peace and joy that comes with experiencing the gift of the Now.
Why wait to feel joy and peace when you can experience them now? Focus on the journey by living in the present moment, and you’ll find that you already have an infinite depth of peace and joy within yourself right now.
Tip 7: Break Up Your Goal Into Simple Habits
One of the most excellent tips for goal setting is what I learned from my coach.
Often, it’s very easy to become overwhelmed with all of the action steps involved in attaining a goal. This fantastic tip is the incredible power of cultivating simple habits.
Remember: No matter how large or small, every goal breaks down into a series of habits and tiny little action steps.
View it this way: Every goal is the compounding effect of a series of habits. The tedious, mundane tasks that you do day in and day out lead to the result that you’re after.
Stop overcomplicating your life and goals. It’s impossible to do everything at the same time, so instead of constantly giving yourself the jitters, start focusing on each little action step.
When you “forget” about the result and instead focus on each little tiny action step, you’ll relieve yourself of a large load of stress. In contrast, doing so will also make it easy to enjoy the journey.
Over to You!
Are you sick of being stagnant in your life and not achieving the goals that you’re after? Utilize the fantastic tips for goal setting in this post and refine your goal setting process.
Remember, no human being is born with a mastery of the goal setting process. If you made mistakes in the past, that’s okay because you’ve learned from the past.
It’s time to let your old self go and install some new healthy habits that will move you towards your goals.
What is your favorite goal setting tips? Post in the comments.
Also, if you know somebody struggling to achieve goals in their life, share this post with them to give them some great goal setting tips.
