It's Goal Season

As the year begins to wind down Goal Season begins to heat up.  Goal Season is the period between Thanksgiving Day, when people swear that next year they won’t eat so much, and continues through January, when people beat themselves up for not keeping their young resolutions.

Today, you may be feeling business or personal pressures to finish the year strong.  If you already did your planning for 2010 in October, good for you.  For the 97% of the rest of us, this is the time to plan anew.

What are you going to do make sure you achieve your next goal?  First off, you need to want it, badly.  If it’s not motivating to you, just how fun do you think it’s going to be to achieve?  If you’re working on a goal that’s not fun, you should probably stop.  Life is too short.  So, what is it you want to do or have?  Avoid mediocrity by making it a great goal.  You should never be without a great goal.

It’s been said many times and in many ways; be sure your goal is S.M.A.R.T.

S - Make it specific.  Broad goals decay quickly.  Vague goals get vague results.

M - Make it measurable.  You won’t achieve your goal with one grand action.  It will take several little actions.  It’s those little actions that you’ll want to measure.  A little now, leads to a lot over time.

A - Make it attainable.  Americans are an optimistic lot and think that anything they want is attainable.  Because of this mindset, they nearly always get what they want.  Stretch yourself, like a rubber band – but don’t overextend or you’ll snap.

R - Make it realistic.  This has a direct correlation to your motivation.  If you’re not realistic about your current skills, the resources you have, and what additional things you’ll need to reach your goal, you’re destined for some disappointment, and that would break my heart.

T - Make it timely.  Getting squishy with time commitments will serve no one.  Time is the silent accountability partner.  It steadily ticks along, whether you’re ready or not.

Here’s a bonus tip.  Make your goal positive in nature and phrase it in a way that causes the creation of something.  Think about it; a goal to lose ten pounds sounds silly.  Who makes it a goal to lose something?  A goal is about scoring points.  Get enough successful goals and you have a winning streak.  It’d be better to be specific about the realistic and attainable weight you want to be on the date you think you can achieve that weight.  Soon you’ll be creating a brand new you!

Okay, here’s another bonus tip.  You could call it a “Bim-Bonus”:  Having a goal to stop doing something will be less successful than a goal of starting to do something that is more important to you.  Eventually the more important goal will replace the less important one.

If you need help finding, setting or getting your next great goal, give me a shout.  It’s what I do.

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