“Hi everyone I wanted to talk to you a little about goals. I am not a great goals person, personally I find them a lot of pressure. I don’t like it.
Finding ways to make goal setting work for you
But I did find some ways that goals worked for me and one of those was to be totally okay with myself whether or not I reached them. I use goals as something to move me forward not necessarily to be perfect in or to achieve 100%.
So what I started doing, I can’t even remember what year – probably 2006 or 2007, something like that. It was just a whim. I had these goals I wanted to achieve and so I scrapbooked them and put them up on the wall.
Make them visible so you don’t forget them
Having them on the wall reminded me that I was working on them.
Because that’s my biggest problem when I have a goal — I forget! I forget that I’m working on it!
And I made them pretty so I enjoyed looking at them, so I didn’t look at them and go “Ugh I haven’t done that yet”. I looked at them and went “Wow!” and I read them over and over. And that was a positive thing for me.
Keep them visible
And then often at the end of the year I would make a response page and make this little book of my goals for that year.
So here is the example. Here are my goals for 2010 and here’s some of the goals that I set. Be grateful and be happy. Focusing on the negative is being ungrateful. It was a big lesson for me that year. Get better at giving service. They’re not all super, you know, like that. Save $8,000. That was the year I was saving for the gastric bypass surgery. How about this one? The year of no speeding or breaking the road rules. My dad’s a traffic cop but you know.
Did I achieve them?
Then did I achieve them or not? Sometimes yes, totally! Sometimes maybe – progress was made. Sometimes no.
So I just want to share with you that’s one way that I use my creativity to help me move forward. I do a page to stick on the wall and to remind myself of the goal and then at the end of the year I might make a little book out of it and do a response for each one of what progress I’ve made or what progress I didn’t make.
But I’m happy if I don’t reach it 100%. I know that progress was made and I’m happy with that. I’m not hard on myself about it. So I think it’s a personal thing. Some people need that pressure to get moving. I don’t really. I do need to set the intention and be clear about it and I do need to remind myself that that’s the goal I’m working on. Because my hardest thing about reaching goals is that I forget that’s what I’m focusing on. How annoying.
So I use my skills, my interests, my talents, my strengths. Make them visible, make them pretty. Put them up on the wall. It works for me. I wonder if any of that might be helpful for you.
How can you make goal setting work for you?
If you’ve got something you’re working on why don’t you make it visual? Why don’t you make it pretty? It doesn’t have to be scrapbooking. It doesn’t have to be what anyone else thinks is pretty. It should be something that will inspire you!
That’s my challenge for you today!
