Our New Year’s resolutions are a tradition, most common in the Western World but also found in the Eastern World. You would like to continue our good practice, change our undesired traits, achieve your goals, or improve your behaviour at the beginning of a calendar year.
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How to Achieve Your Goals
On that night, you will be full of big ideas, and you promise yourself that this year you would accomplish “those goals” and make it happen. How many of these New Year’s resolutions have in the end improved the quality of your life? Probably not much, as it is most likely a desire, but does not hold an actual commitment. And the data speaks clearly: 80 percent of people fail to follow through on their New Year’s resolutions by February.
We do not set goals only at New Year, we have goals of all calibres set for ourselves every single day. We have our morning goals, objectives to improve our health and we all would like to have success and upgrade our life. In that sense, we need to find ways to achieve our goals!
Let’s start with 15 ways that may actually help you.
1. Responsibility
The commitment and responsibility of a goal in your life start with you. It starts with the willingness to be the processor, the founder and the source of your life.
Responsibility is not a burden or a shortcoming, nor should it bring praise, blame or guilt. There is no right or wrong, correct or incorrect. No one can make you responsible, and you cannot impose responsibility on someone else. It is simply that goal where you take a stand for.
Being responsible starts with the willingness to deal with a situation from the point of view, that you are the one in control of what you do. What you have and who you are. You cannot blame it on someone else, an institution, the economy or an organisation. It is a favour that you give to yourself, creating a powerful context from which you choose to live!
2. Leadership Goals
Your life can be compared to a country: a kingdom. Your life is changing all the time. In your kingdom, pain, sorrow, joy, love, happiness, death, and life will come and go. When you are thinking about your setting your goals, it might help to ask yourself the following questions.
Are you the king or queen who controls your country, or do you let yourself be guided by others? Who do you have in your Kingdom? With whom do you work together? How do you deal with things in life and at work? What does your family of origin look like? What has happened in that family? Has everyone been involved? Is there freedom?
3. ASMART Objectives
At work we have the performance management cycle throughout the year that connects individual objectives, behaviours and performance to the evolving company objectives and HR Strategy. These objectives are always set as ASMART objectives. Make sure you will set your personal goals in life ASMART too.
4. Growth Mindset
Setting goals and achieving them will go hand in hand with changes in your life to achieve them. However, to believe change is possible, you will have to work on your mindset and awareness to accept any delays, hick-ups or deceptions along the way. You could apply daily affirmations, pray to God and/or meditate to improve your growth mindset.
5. Write Down Your Goals
When you write down your goals on a piece of paper or in a notebook, you will for sure feel a greater sense of accountability and responsibility. Also, there is a higher chance in accomplishing your goals.
6. Vision Board
Visualising exactly when you have achieved your goals is a great motivator and one of the best ways of actualising them. Put a sticky note on your mirror, create a vision board with pictures on the wall on your desk or refrigerator. Find ways that inspire you to view your board regularly and get motivated to work on your goals.
7. Make a Plan
To stay on track, you need to have more than good intentions. Creating a plan for your goals is very critical in achieving them. Make sure to break down your goals into easy steps. Set deadlines and celebrate each milestone.
8. Daily Practice
Setting your goals is one thing, but to put in the work on a daily basis will require consistency and dedication in your daily life. It would be beneficial to block time in your calendar every day to work on your goals. Creating a schedule, executing your tasks and monitoring your progress will contribute to your success rate.
9. Efficiency and Effectiveness
If you run out of time completing tasks or have limited time to work on your activities, consider applying strategies that can help you improve your time management skills. We all want things to get completed or rather quickly done. Please find tips and reminders to support and work smarter.
10. Re-assess and Alter Your Plan
Taking the time to review your plan is important as well as alter your plan accordingly. Maintaining an open mind and accepting opportunities as they present themselves, can help foster your plan even more. As well as, allowing you to accept roadblocks or realise that the plan was not realistic.
11. Development of (New) Skills
A significant step in achieving your goals is to consider what talents you need to improve and why they are critical for reaching your goal. It is essential to ensure that the abilities you are aiming for are aligned with your vision.
12. Inform Others and Start Communicating
Sharing with others your vision, actions and plan will support you actualising your goals. However, communication may sometimes be difficult, and it might be useful to be aware of nonverbal communication methods. Learning how to deal with people’s reactions and/or negative influence on your overall personal growth will help you in overcoming your fears.
13. Learn from Your Failures
Failure is sometimes part of the process of moving toward achieving your goals. However, failure does not have to determine your overall success. You can re-assess your plan and alter it. Failure is a great opportunity for learning new strategies.
14. Track Your Progress
Make sure to check in mentally with your goals, but also track the progress in real-time. Remember, some progress is better than no progress at all! Small wins are massive motivators, but we rarely recognise them.
15. Reward Yourself and Celebrate Each Milestone
Rewarding yourself for accomplishing an action or for succeeding at achieving your goal is important. Whether the reward is taking yourself to lunch, watching an episode of your favourite TV show, please pop the champagne and enjoy the small success.
More Information
- HR Training Excellence: Elevate Success with a Learning Path
- Performance Management Strategy: HR Guide to Performance
- How To Be Successful in Employee Performance Reviews
- Human in Progress Academy – Leading by Learning
