3 Things That Will Make It Easier To Achieve Your Goals in 2017

I own a pair of jeans that will soon celebrate their fifth birthday.

Sadly for them they haven’t had much of a life. They have always been too small for me and have never left my wardrobe.

Last January I decided it was going to be the year they finally got to see the rest of the world.

A year on and they are still buried in the deepest depths of Narnia.

Sound familiar? I had all the best intentions. I knew exactly what I needed to do. I just couldn’t do it.

Setting the goal to fit into those jeans felt pretty good. Imagining myself prancing about in them made me all happy.

Then I thought about what I would have to do in the coming weeks and months to get there. And that bit was horrible.

It was going to be hard. I was going to have to avoid things I enjoyed. I would have to constantly fight the urge to give up along the way. It was going to be a bloody hard battle.

Even though I knew lots of different ways of getting there I didn’t make it. I kept trying. I’d get a new burst of motivation and vow I was going to do it. In the end I couldn’t make it through the long hard slog.

Thankfully those efforts weren’t totally wasted… I learned a lot from those jeans (and a few other goals I didn’t achieve last year) so that this year I can create better goals that will set me up to succeed from the start.

To give us the best chance at achieving our goals we need to make them feel as good as possible along the way. It may sound cliched, but if we enjoy the journey we are much less likely to give up. If the route ahead looks fun we can almost guarantee we’ll make it to our destination.

So how can we set challenging goals, and give ourselves the best chance to achieve them, without wanting to run screaming in the opposite direction when we think about what we need to do to get there?

1. What do you REALLY want?

Setting a goal to fit into those jeans wasn’t really about those jeans at all. What I REALLY wanted to feel was comfortable and confident in my body.

Another way to know I’ll feel comfortable and confident in my body is to “Learn to listen to, love and trust my body”

It sounds so much easier than squeezing myself into a pair of jeans. It sounds like something I can do. Something that I might even enjoy doing. It feels good.

It will encourage me to make better and healthier choices for my body from a place of love, instead of a place of pain and shame. It’s a goal that I know I have a much better chance at sticking with AND that is going to lead to me feeling good whatever size or shape I am at the end of the year.

What is it you REALLY want? What goals can help you get there that would feel good along the way too?

2. Be confident

When I set a goal those “helpful” little voices in my head suggest all the different ways people in my life might respond to it. I find it exhausting to explain my choices to people, so I end up adapting my goals and plans to anticipate what they might say and avoid doing things in a way that might cause a fuss.

I would love to have a big pink neon sign on my head that says “I know I’m not doing it YOUR way, but I have thought it through and I’m happy doing it MY way.”

This year, even though I don’t have the pink neon sign, I am committed to doing things MY way. My new tactic to deal with the exhaustion is to be confident in my goals and stop defending my decisions. I know my goals are right for me. No further discussion needed.

What is stopping you being totally confident in your goals? What would your goals be if you weren’t worried about what anyone else thought?

3. Listen to yourself FIRST

Whenever we tell people our goals we get an avalanche of advice about how to achieve them.

If I’d told people at the beginning of 2016 that I wanted to lose 15–20lbs to fit into those jeans I can guarantee most people in my life would have an opinion. A whole range of diets, exercise regimes and lifestyle changes. A ton of advice that might come with the best of intentions, but is completely overwhelming, conflicting and confusing.

And if you’re anything like me you don’t want to offend people by telling them to shut up… even if that’s what you’re screaming inside!

But sometimes we feel like we don’t know where to start. And we really do want some help and support around how to achieve our goals.

Some advice can be genuinely helpful, but if you take advice that isn’t right for you it can send you off in the completely wrong direction.

We are all unique. We have different personalities and experiences of the world. Something that worked brilliantly for me might do nothing for you. That doesn’t make my advice bad, or make you crap for not being able to follow it and get results, it just means we are different. There is no one best solution that works for everyone.

So before you take any advice listen to yourself first. More often than not we already know what we need to do AND we know what has worked well for us in the past. If we are are tuned into that we instinctively know which advice is helpful and what to ignore.

If we set our goals based on what we know is best for us, instead of what others think might work, we give ourselves the best chance of achieving them.

Knowing what’s worked well for you in the past, what is most likely going to help you achieve your goals now? How can you do that in a way that feels good?

Your Inner Sat Nav

Ultimately the reason I want to feel comfortable and confident in my body is so I can spend less time feeling crap about myself and use that energy to make a bigger difference and help improve the lives of others.

I know many of your goals will be about setting yourself up to have a positive impact in the world. Getting yourself to a place where you feel happy and secure in your own life so you can do even more for other people.

You can make the biggest difference in this world if you trust yourself and have confidence in your actions. You will give yourself the best chance of achieving your goals in 2017 if you keep listening to yourself and follow your inner sat nav.

Which point did you find most helpful? And how will it make your 2017 goals more achievable?

Share in the comments below — you might inspire someone else have the confidence to set goals that are right for them too!

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