How To Set Goals That You'll Actually Stick To For Once
Pro tip: it's all about the prep work and aligning with what you really want.
If you’re like me you’ve tried countless times to set goals only to forget about them a couple weeks later and never get them done. You’ve tried the SMART method, various goal-setting guides, and nothing has worked. You get discouraged about your complete lack of progress or “discipline” and stop trying to set goals entirely.
If this is sounding like you don’t worry friend, you aren’t alone.
This method will honestly sound super similar to other goal setting methods but there’s one key difference… a heavy dose of ensuring there is alignment.
See, like New Years resolutions, we usually set goals from a superficial surface. We want to lose some weight or get a new job. Our subconscious mind is running the show and filling in limitations before we even know it causing us to set goals that just aren’t truly aligned with our happiness overall.
This is where my method comes into play to change the game entirely.
(For my paid subscribers you can find a workbook provided below to help guide you through this process. Feel free to read on or scroll down and get to the workbook!)
Getting Into Alignment
The first step, and the most crucial, is getting into alignment with what we really want.
As I said above, our subconscious mind tends to place a heck of a lot of limitations on us without us even realizing it. This first step of setting our goals helps us to clear those limitations and dream big so we can identify what we actually want in our lives.
We’re going to utilize a technique called scripting to get us into the zone and determine how we truly envision our lives.
What does your dream life look like 5 years from now?
If you feel limitations pop up I want you to honor them and then shoo them away. It can feel scary to dream big but what’s scarier is living a life dictated by fear.
If money were no object, what career would you have? How would you spend your time every day? What would your ideal day look like from wake to sleep?
What does your dream home look like? Where is it? What feeling does it give you?
What do your relationships look like, both romantic and platonic?
What does your physical self look like? How do you hold yourself? What is your style? How is your mental health and physical health?
The most important part here is to d r e a m B I G !
Establishing Our Goal Categories
Breaking our dream life into categories helps us to digest our vision in a way that’s manageable for our brains. Look at your dream and break it into the following categories:
Environment (home and location)
Career
Finances
Relationships
Personal
Mental Health
Physical Health
What Needs to Change?
Now that we’ve established our dream life and our categories lets create our big goals. Our big goals are our general goals for each category. Avoid going overboard and choosing multiple goals for each category. Try to limit yourself to one big goal per category. You can always revisit this once you’ve completed a goal.
Compare your life now to your dream life. It’s incredibly important to now allow yourself to get discouraged during this process. Your dream life might seem so far from where you are now and that’s OKAY! This is the entire point of the process. We’re creating stepping stones to safely cross the ocean.
Let yourself make this a brain dump. Write down all the changes you need to make, file them into your categories, and then create your big goal for each using the list.
Get specific with your big goal as well.
Instead of this: I want a new job.
Try this: I will find a new job making $80k a year working in tech for a company that values work life balance and treats their workers with respect.
Breaking It Down Into Action Steps
The popcorn chicken of your roast chicken goal.
In order to actually make progress on our goals we need to create action steps that can easily be chewed away and added into our daily lives.
Write down as many of these action steps as you need.
For example:
Main Goal: I will find a new job making $80k a year working in tech for a company that values work life balance and treats their workers with respect.
Action Steps:
I will complete a UX design course within 6 months while working at my current job.
I will update my resume to highlight my completion of this course and my soft skills I’ve gained from working my other jobs.
I will network with 4 people a week through various platforms to help get my name out there and find opportunities.
I will apply for 5 jobs a day 4 days a week until I find my dream job.
I will work on 1 personal project a month to boost my UX portfolio.
Schedule It In
The only way to actually make your dreams come true is by taking aligned action. Sprinkle your action steps into your schedule so you can get the groundwork done. Our goals aren’t accomplished simply by thinking about them.
B E R E A L I S T I C!
For the love of yorba be realistic with yourself when adding these items in. Honor yourself and your need to rest and have downtime while working on your goals. Burnout leads us nowhere.
Add Monthly or Quarterly Check-Ins
Adding your daily action steps in can be great but we aren’t always going to be great at getting them done. Especially if we aren’t being realistic with what we can get done.
Set monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, or bi-yearly check-ins with yourself to ensure that,
A) you’re on track with your goals and;
B) you’re still aligned with your goals.
Our goals may change over time as we change as well. Honor this process and allow your goals to flex and change with you. Also acknowledge that being behind on, or simply not completing, a goal does not make you a moral failure. Allow yourself grace and the space to be human with this process.
I sincerely hope that this guide helps to get you on track and inspires you to set goals that help get you closer to your dream life. You are so capable of achieving amazing things and I want you to truly internalize and understand that.
Dream big and shoot for the moon babes! You can do it!
Until next time!
xo,
Roo
(Ps. Paid subs don’t forget about your printable workbook pages below! I’ll be sharing a complete example of my personal goal-setting guide and process in another post for you paid subscribers only as well.)
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