How to avoid the most common pitfall and achieve your goals.

While I’m not one for setting new year resolutions, I do like to take some time to 📒 review the year gone by before setting goals for the new year.

There’s a process we do inside the Confident Planner Club called FRESH, the three steps for goal setting success. It starts with the most important thing you need to do before setting goals in the new year.

The Three Steps for Goal Setting Success

Step One : Reflect

Success begins with a review of the past year before you set goals and make a plan 📅 to achieve them.

The initial pages of FUSElife Planners are designed specifically to help you reflect on the past year and uncover the most important insights you need for setting your goals for the new year.

We often miss these important insights when we don’t take the time to do a review or when we don’t know what we’re looking for.

Your year can take on a while new direction with just one insight.

Doing a review BEFORE you set goals exponentially increases the probably of achieving your goals.

The reason being that when you’re clear on where you are at right now, you’re more likely to set goals that will actually help you get to where YOU want to go, and avoid the pitfalls that have kept your stuck in the past.

It’s like turning on your location settings for your Map app when you want directions to get to that new coffee shop.

When you set the goals based on were you are starting from you’re taking the next step on the ladder, rather than trying to skip three steps or jump across to another ladder, it’s a much more enjoyable experience rather than one of hustle and burnout.

You may be having an ah-ha moment right now, and you’re realising why you haven’t succeeded with your goals before.

To succeed with your goals you need to know YOUR starting location before you can set the right goals for YOU and map out an achievable plan that will get YOU from where you are to where you want to be.

Once you have your starting location, now you’re ready to explore where you want to go.

Step Two : Collect

It’s now time to explore your options and collect a bunch of ideas about what this year could look like because there’s more than one way to get to that new coffee shop 😉

Two of my favourite planner 📝 pages for this part of the FRESH process are the Mission + Vision. These pages are specifically designed to help you explore where you want to go.

It can be challenging to think about what you want.

Our brain wants to know how we’re going to get there before we’ve even decided where we’re going. That’s its job, to solve problems, come up with creative ideas and conserve energy doing it.

When we’re clear about our starting location, it’s easier to slow your brain down and have fun exploring your options because you’ve already put a red pin in to mark your current position.

Before we go any further I have a quick confession … due to the passing of my Mum early this year I’m just getting into my new year goal setting at the end of the first quarter.

It’s been just like that saying, life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans, even if they were only in my head.

You’ll be glad to know that no matter how this year has started for you, and whether it’s January or April, you haven’t missed it, you don’t need a special day of the week, month or year to do a little reflection before you decide where you’re headed next.

And if you’d like some help with this process book a Fast Action Coaching Session here. It’s ideal if you want clarity or a strategy to solve a challenge, or some help to decide what’s next.

Ok, so where were we … exploring our options with the mission and vision pages.

The MISSION questions are all about helping you connect with your WHY, this is the fuel that keeps you motivated to overcome doubts, fears and uncertainty that’s ahead.

After all, we’re in uncharted territory. You’re doing new things and travelling a new path to a new location, and knowing your why helps you to keep taking that next step forward on days when it’s scary or hard.

The VISION page helps you connect with your WHAT, how you want to live out your why, to explore ideas for how you want to impact the world around you.

There are so many different and unique ways you can 🙌 live out your mission + vision.

Each of those options can be broken down into a range of unique goals. And there are lots of different ways you can achieve those goals.

At the end of the Vision page you’ll decide on your One Thing Goal. Now it’s important to remember that this isn’t the only goal you’ll have for the year, however it’s the one goal that makes other goals possible, and in some cases even easier to accomplish. It’s the next logical step toward bringing your vision to life.

Once you’ve narrowed down where you want to go, it’s time to map out a Big Picture plan to get there.

In coaching we call this chunking down as we are going down towards the details of your plan, like a funnel that’s narrowing your focus down towards a specific target.

Step Three : Connect

Now it’s time to map it out and connect to a plan of action.

Your Big Picture planner pages will help you break down your One Thing Goal into smaller projects. Yep, we’re chunking down again to get to the details that will help you take action in your day to day schedule so it’s that bit easier for you to achieve your goals.

How you go about achieving your goals is a unique combination of your personality, strengths and skills.

That’s why it’s better to create your own plan rather than copy what someone does. what works for them most likely won’t work for you.

On a side note Confident Planners don’t do S.M.A.R.T. Goals, we do S.M.A.R.T Projects.

We chunk goals down another step because it makes it easier to put those actions in your schedule and follow through in taking action.

You’ll notice that the actions you put in your schedule to achieve your goals are directly related to your mission + vision. That’s really important for sustaining motivation, feeling productive and having a sense of purpose in what you’re doing each day.

No matter what your goals are and how you will go about achieving them (that will be unique to you too), there’s one skill we need to ensure our success, and that’s the ability to pivot and change course along the way.

Remember what we said earlier, that there are many ways to achieve your goals and bring your vision to life.

I see this 🤓 with each one of my business and coaching clients.

Whether it’s to start a new business, grow their business or get their health or schedule in shape, the actions they think will get them to their destination don’t turn out to be the things that actually help them achieve their goals.

We want to remain focused and fixed on our mission + vision, and flexible on how we’re going to achieve our goals.

If what you’re doing isn’t working, make a new plan and try something else.

The Most Common Pitfall in Achieving your Goals

One of the greatest joys I am blessed with as a qualified coach is to help others uncover 🤔 what’s holding them back from achieving their goals.

The answer to that question is unique to each person.

When someone isn’t clear on their current location or are too fixed in how they have decided to reach their goals, they will struggle because their plan is based on someone else’s location, ability or destination.

This is the most common pitfall I see that stops people from achieving their goals and living their best life.

Your goals need to be about you, your skills and desires. It’s not selfish, it’s essential if you’re going to succeed.

As clients discover these insights about themselves, it’s like the dimmer switch has just been turned up and 🤩 it illuminates their OWN path forward.

This clarity comes from a combination of their mission + vision (the unique impact we can have on the world) and their identity (who we are right now in this moment, that’s our location).

We can’t copy other people’s plans and expect them to work for us, in business or life. So there’s no use comparing. That only keeps you stuck, and it keeps those around you stuck too.

Other people’s journey and success can and should inspire us to find and achieve ours.

No one’s journey will ever be the same as yours. There will be similar principles at work and we need others to support and encourage us on our journey to success.

We can’t succeed by copying others either. As Dr Seuss says, “There is no one alive that is youer than you!”

Your path to success and how you achieve your goals is unique to YOU.

The key to success is to be more of YOU, to lean into what makes you unique, to make your goals and plans to achieve those goals in alignment with who you are and where you are right now, with your unique strengths and skills.

When you do that you’ll have more energy, more stamina to go the distance and enjoy the journey more too!

Your success shows others that it’s possible for them too.

So follow these three steps for goal setting success to avoid the most common pitfall for achieving your goals and make this year your best one yet!

It’s time to Succeed by Design.

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Success comes when you #takeAction

• Book a Fast Action Coaching Session here and let’s chat!
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