Three simple steps to calm your goal-setting anxiety!

Three simple steps to calm your goal-setting anxiety:
The where, what and how of goal setting.

It’s that part of the year to take time to reset, recalibrate or focus on your new goals. Some truly enjoy this process. They spend hours thinking, writing and creating their plans for the new year. Others dread it. It feels forced and arbitrary based on some numbers on a calendar. While I value the ideal of goal setting and focus that it provides, I have always struggled with putting pen to paper to organize the goals that I want to achieve in any given time period. It was a struggle that I often avoided.

That changed by applying a very simple formula to organize my goal-setting process.

- I started by focusing on where I wanted my goals to take me.

- Then I decided what I must do to achieve them.

- Finally, I focused on the behaviors that established how I would get there.

Let’s talk about the where first. For you to have goals based on a time period you have to have a vision of where success will take you. What’s your vision of success? Dream. Dream big and beyond the calendar in front of you. Keep in mind that some are motivated by achievement. Things like: rewards, toys, dollars, assets, freedom, destinations, fame and praise. Others are motivated by pain avoidance. Avoiding things like: letting someone down, losing their gains, shame and embarrassment, finishing second or admitting failure. There is no right or wrong way to create your where. You simply need to establish a focus of where you are trying to go or avoid going so when the going gets tough you will have a focal point to keep you on your path. Vision boards can help you find your where.

Now that you have your where, it’s time to focus on what you need to achieve for you to arrive at or avoid your destination. The “what” comes in many forms and since we all have complex lives, they should have many forms. Most importantly the what needs to be specific: dollars earned, money saved, steps completed, pounds and inches lost, strength gained, or steps completed. Your what(s) can be business, personal, financial, spiritual, social, romantic, physical…It doesn’t matter. It just needs to be specific and measurable. Pick a target, even one that you think is too big and make that your focus. Track it and measure your progress.

The how is perhaps the most critical piece of the puzzle. Research has shown that most new year’s resolutions are done and forgotten in as little as 15 days after they were created. That’s usually because a goal without a plan is simply a dream. I am sure you have heard this before. Where and what are critical steps because you need to focus and the ability to track and measure.

How is about behavior. How will you do things differently to achieve your new goals? Will you get up earlier? Will you attend new events? Will you make more calls? Will you reach out to old friends? Will you schedule more time to meditate? Will you hire a coach or an accountability partner? Much like the what, the how needs to be specific and an activity that you can track. At Sandler we leverage a concept called a cookbook. This is your recipe for success that you can refer to every day, week, month, quarter and year to hold yourself accountable to your daily choices.

Goal setting is about making new choices every day.

Where will those choices take you? What will those choices produce for you? And finally, how will you hold yourself accountable for making the right choices in the right moments?

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