Keeping up with the Goalsies!

Keeping up with your neighbours, the Joneses, is one thing. But how are you keeping up with your goals?

Now that we’re already almost a quarter of the way through the year, it’s a good time to check in on your progress.

But first, a crucial question:

What’s Your Measure of Success?

Who are you measuring against? Your friends and neighbours? Your boss, parents, an influential well-known person or someone else in your life? Or maybe success is something personal to you. Money in the bank; a thriving family and home; the size of your team; how the business or department is growing under your leadership.

Or perhaps it’s simply making it to work every day. Travelling in and actually seeing your colleagues is a big achievement these days! Interaction with people is such a boost to our wellbeing, being a great goal in itself.

So, take a look at the goals you set yourself. How are you progressing through your tasks to achieve them? Even if you’re remaining on track, how can you progress even more to achieve that goal sooner and move on to bigger, better things? What’s hidden deep inside you that you can harness to move forwards even faster, or for increased growth and gain?

Growing Yourself and Your Business

The GROW Model is a powerful but simple to implement process that can be used for many different purposes and projects, including revisiting your goals. This process helps people to move to greater things, faster.

Here’s a reminder of my GROW Model:

G – Goal: is your goal inspiring enough? Does it reflect your Purpose?
R – Reality: what is your current reality? Are there any obstacles?
O – Options: what do you need? Are your options realistic?
W – Will, Way and When: this is your ‘Actions’ and ‘Motivation’ list

For a full reminder of the GROW Model and how to use it to revisit and tweak your goals, have a look here. As you work through each stage, dig deep to find the honest answers within you.

Notice how this model is reflected in the following process. Below, I’ve outlined ways to help you revisit your goals, creating a more successful version of you, your work or your business.

Challenge Yourself to Become the Successful You!

It takes practise and continuous improvement for growth and resilience to happen. And they, in turn, help you to become more successful and happier in your life. Not, I hasten to add, does happiness necessarily have anything to do with success. But it can help!

So, let’s start by looking at your current situation. If you’re not where you want to be, or even if you are, it’s still good practise to regularly re-evaluate your goals. If there’s an obstacle in the way, break it down into chunks that are easier to deal with.

Chunking the problem down helps you to find the root cause. What is it that’s holding you back, or is in the way?

Perhaps you’re worried about what might happen if things go wrong. Or nervous about how you’ll manage if everything goes to plan and it really is a success! What do you need to help you overcome those obstacles? When you succeed and gain those extra orders, customers, clients, how will you then satisfy their demands? Perhaps you need more resources – people, materials or space.

Generating Solutions

Now that you have clarity on where you’re going and what’s needed, it’s time to find the solutions needed to help you get there:

• List about 8 things you can do to generate the solutions needed
• Next, consider which ones are most realistic, or easiest to source or do first. Or you may prefer the challenge of finding or doing the hardest one first, as I do!
• Then, write a plan on how to achieve those solutions, how they can work. If you realise that some are seemingly impossible, you may need to cut your list down to 5 actions
• As you implement each action and generate the solutions, do a big tick against them and congratulate yourself, perhaps with a small motivational reward

I’m sure you’ve heard me say before about the need to keep practising to progress to greater things. Practise to Progression, not Perfection!

Challenge yourself regularly to keep practising these methods. And then adapt your goals to match your new vision, helping you to find the bigger picture.

If you need someone to help you find your way, a good coach will always help. So, do get in touch if you need a neutral sounding board to help you clarify your vision and journey.