5 Tips for Achieving Your Goals — for Good
Is there an important goal you want to achieve, but you’re not making the progress you desire? Maybe you want to lose weight, get more sleep, start exercising, spend more time with your partner, create greater work-life balance, save more money, get a promotion, or any number of things that would make your life better. Or perhaps your struggle is not achieving your goals, but maintaining them over time.
Despite our desire to make and maintain important changes in our lives, there are a lot of challenges that can get in the way of achieving our goals. Do any of these five challenges sound familiar?
Challenge 1: Lack of Motivation
Are you feeling a lack of energy and zest? Do you start out strong, but find your passion and motivation to achieve your goals wane over time?
Challenge 2: Lack of Clarity
Do you know what you want? Can you picture and describe it in detail? Or are your goals vague and undefined?
Challenge 3: Procrastination
Do you find yourself putting off important tasks or making excuses? Do you wait until the last minute to complete your tasks?
Challenge 4: Fear of Failure
Are you afraid of failing at your goal? So much so that it feels easier and safer not to not even try? Do you self-sabotage?
Challenge 5: Lack of Support
Do you feel alone in your journey? Do you lack the support, encouragement, and resources you need to accomplish your goals?
If any of these challenges feel familiar, keep reading! You can overcome all of them and experience success for good.
I’m a clinical psychologist and board-certified coach and for the last two decades my job has been to help people reach their goals. I want to share 5 of the main strategies my clients have used to make important and lasting changes in their lives. I’ve used these same strategies in my own life to obtain my Ph.D., write several books, and start a small business. With these strategies, you too can achieve the lasting positive changes you desire in your life!
Tip 1: Identify the MOST compelling reason you want to make this change.
Many of us are good at identifying “what” we want to change but are less adept at identifying “why” we want to change.
And by that, I mean identifying why we really want to change, not why we think we should change.
For example, I’ve had clients say they want to lose 25 pounds because they want to fit into a smaller size of clothing. Weeks go by with no change in their behaviors or weight. Why? Because although fitting into smaller clothes would feel nice, this reason doesn’t compel them to do the hard work to lose the weight.
However, when these same clients say, “I want to lose weight because I can no longer get on the floor to play with my grandchildren and this is devastating to me,” change starts to happen quickly. It’s incredibly motivating when you find your deeper why for the goal you want to accomplish.
If motivation has been an issue for you, spend some time determining the most compelling reasons you want to make your desired change. This core reason will be your best motivator during the tough times.
Tip 2: Envision yourself having achieved your goal. Feel this success in your mind and body.
Goals are achieved in our minds before they are achieved in our lives. We first need to be able to see ourselves behaving or living in a new way. The possibility for change starts in our minds.
We can rewire our brains for change and success.
For example, I worked with a client who wanted to save more money and achieve more financial stability. His parents were poor, and his childhood was tough as a result. Although he had a very good paying job, he was living paycheck to paycheck, barely paying his bills.
When we dug deeper to find out what was getting in his way, he confessed that he just couldn’t see himself as someone who had “means” and that he still saw himself as poor. He wasn’t able to start saving money and changing his financial situation until he was able to see himself as someone who was financially well. He started to achieve his goal not by changing his salary, but by changing his mindset.
Create a vivid vision of yourself having achieved your goal. Get your five senses involved. What does it look like? Feel like? Sound like? Even smell and taste like? The more vivid you can make the vision, the more areas of your brain will be activated, creating new pathways for this desired reality.
Once you have experienced your vision internally, it becomes much easier to replicate it externally in your life.
Tip 3: Engage in small action steps consistently.
This strategy is one of the most effective strategies I’ve found for reaching my goals. Often, we create action steps that are too big and as a result we don’t do them. This sets us up for failure. The more we fail, the less motivated we are to try again.
I had a client that just couldn’t get herself to start exercising no matter how much she said she wanted to. Every week she’d plan to go to the gym, and she never did. Instead, I suggested that she walk for five minutes every day outside after dinner. She laughed at first saying five minutes was not really exercising. But I knew if we kept her action step very small, she’d experience success and that this success would build on itself.
The key was to make the action step so small that she could do it daily; consistency was key.
By the following week, she had walked every day after dinner for 10 minutes. Then the next week it was 15 minutes. Within six weeks, she was walking 40 minutes a day and she’s still doing it months later.
Think about the goal you want to achieve. Then choose the smallest action step that you could take toward achieving it. The trick is to choose an action so small that you can do it consistently, ideally daily. The smaller the steps and the more consistent you are at taking them, the more likely you are to build on your success and reach your goal.
Tip 4: Track your action steps and progress.
Many of us fail to reach our goals because we don’t put a structure around them. We wing it and then wonder why we weren’t successful.
Research shows that the act of writing down your goals and action steps makes you more likely to achieve them.
Let’s say you want to improve your relationship with your partner. You think about the steps that might help you reach that goal: date nights, putting the phone down more often to engage in conversation, checking in by text during the day, planning that vacation you keep talking about. You decide you’re going to do more of these things.
Months go by and the relationship still feels stale. What worked and what didn’t work? What should you do differently going forward? What should you do more of? Less of?
It will be hard to answer these questions if you haven’t tracked your action steps or progress.
Find a tracking method that feels fun and sustainable to you to monitor your action steps and your progress. Write down the steps you intend to take, track what steps you do take, and then review the impact they had on your goal. You might choose an app or use the notes section on your phone to do so. Or, if you’re an excel fan, create a spreadsheet. Tracking your progress allows you to make real-time changes, if you’re not seeing the results you want.
Tip 5: Plan for obstacles in advance.
You will encounter obstacles as you work toward achieving your goal. There’s no way around it.
However, you don’t have to be derailed by these obstacles, especially if you plan for them in advance.
Let’s say you’ve been working hard on achieving greater work-life balance and you’ve been enjoying the fruit of your labor (pun intended). Everything is on track. And then your coworker goes on a long vacation, and you are tasked with all her work, in addition to yours, while she’s out. Or your child gets sick, and you have to take a week off work to take care of him.
You feel side-lined and unable to regain your equilibrium. Even after your work settles down, you find yourself stressed, engaging in old habits, and struggling to get back on track.
Planning in advance for potential obstacles helps you from getting derailed when they happen.
Think through all of the things that might get in the way of you achieving your goal. Then, rank the obstacles in terms of their likelihood of occurrence. Pay particular attention to the obstacles that are more likely to occur, as well as the obstacles that might make it extra challenging to get back on track.
Next, identify the support, resources, and strategies you will need to move through each of the obstacles, and put those things in place — or have a plan to do so quickly, if needed.
Achieving your goals becomes much easier when you identify your compelling why for change, spend time envisioning yourself having achieved your goal, create and engage in small action steps toward your goal consistently, monitor your action steps and progress, and plan in advance for obstacles.
Finally, having support and accountability along the way is another important ingredient for making lasting positive change. You might ask a friend or colleague to support you or to be your accountability partner. You might also engage with a trained professional, like a psychologist or coach, who helps people reach and maintain their goals for a living. Joining a group designed to help people make the kind of change you desire is a great way to receive the encouragement, support, and accountability you need to reach your goals.
Lasting positive change is possible when you have the right tools and strategies.
Send me a note and let me know how these tips worked for you. And if you’d like some support along your journey, I’d be delighted to work with you to achieve the lasting positive change you desire.
Want to learn more goal achieving tips like these 5 AND have support applying them to your life? Join me in the “How to Create Lasting Positive Change” virtual coaching group. It’s time to experience success in your life!
Connect with Dr. Michelle Pearce:
Michelle Pearce is a clinical psychologist, board-certified coach, author, researcher, and Professor.
Website: www.drmichellepearce.com
Email: info@drmichellepearce.com
Instagram: @bloomwithdrmichelle
Facebook: DrMichellePearce
