5 Tips for Reaching Your Goals

There’s something that reignites in the fall for a lot of people. Summer is a time for much-needed relaxation and play, but as soon as September is in sight, your inner drive can kick in. Maybe it’s the cooling temps, maybe it’s the universal back-to-school feeling. Whatever the cause, focus that energy in on what you really want and go get it. To ensure that you’re successful, you’ve got to be intentional, planful & thoughtful about where you’re headed. Here are 5 tips for reaching your goals.

1. Examine what you want. First, try to get to the root of your goal. You want to go to the gym more? Okay, but why is that your goal? Maybe you want to feel stronger, or set aside time for yourself every week, or want to feel more in tune with your body. Understanding what’s motivating this goal will help you strongly visualize it and feel more invested in reaching the result. If your goal is to get promoted at your job, is it so that you have more responsibility or that your moving forward in your career and taking the next step toward your dream job? Once you get to the why of your goal, you’ll be able to pin down the specifics of how to get there.
2. Create your plan. If you’re vague with how you plan to execute on your goal, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Start with the basics. If it’s exercise, specify how many times per week you’ll hit the gym. Decide now what your schedule will look like. If you’re gunning for a promotion, determine what projects you’ll need to prioritize or milestones to hit to make it happen. Create a strategy and a weekly or biweekly timeline that will get you to where you want to go.
3. Resist the compromise. Things come up, that’s life. You have to plan for the challenges and expect them, knowing that you’ll still meet your goals in spite of challenges. Once you start delaying or skipping parts of your plan, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Listen, we know that it’s really hard to form a new habit. It’s incredibly easy to break one. You’ve got to give your goals a chance and prepare yourself for things you know might veer you off course. If you know that getting up early for a workout might be hard for you, schedule the early workouts at the beginning of each week, lay your workout clothes out in advance, or plan to meet a friend. Set yourself up for success, rather than failure.
4. Track your progress. From square one, you should track your successes. You’ll see your improvements, how great you feel, and you’ll get addicted to the progress. Find a planner, use a goal chart, or download an app. When you can visually note your progress, your goal feels that much more within reach.
5. Be accountable to yourself, but be realistic. Identify when you’re most likely to get lazy in your pursuit of your goals. Is it when you work late and still want to binge the latest Netflix original series even when you know you should go to bed early? Is it FOMO on the after-work happy hour? Figure out when your determination wavers, and develop a system to counteract it. Have a friend keep you accountable. Keep back-up healthy meals in your freezer. Don’t set unrealistic goals that you can’t keep and then beat yourself up. Start small and build.  Remember that you can meet small goals but that they won’t always be small. Remind yourself that the greatest achievements are made through many small steps.

It’s essential to adjust when you know you need to. Check in with yourself when you feel your inner voice resisting the hustle. Is it because you’re just tired or have you realized you were a little unreasonable in your initial goal setting?

Whatever your goal is, remember that you are an incredible force. Be relentless in your pursuit of what you want and don’t compromise on your goals. There’s no time like the present to work on the #glowup. Go out there, and get what you want.