How To Set Goals & Actually Achieve Them
January 3, 2012 by Arash Mazinani
Filed under All Content, Ladies
I’d like to start my first post of 2012 by wishing all my readers a Happy New Year! I’ve been absent over the festive period mainly to take time out and relax and just enjoy myself instead of having to worry about doing work. My first post of 2012 has nothing really to do with fashion, which is kind of strange considering this is primarily a fashion blog. But I wanted my first post of the year to be on goal setting. Now I wrote a post that was centred around setting goals and more specifically fashion goals last year, but I wanted to expand on how to actually set goals. The reason I want to do this is because my google reader has been filled with resolution posts and goal setting posts that are, if I’m honest, quite weak. They’re just lists and the sad reality is once the habit of the daily grind sets in a lot of these lists are forgotten. You see, I could easy set myself a goal let’s say….to make this blog more successful. But that in itself is not a very good goal. There are a couple of reasons, 1. what do I deem to be ‘successful’ and 2. how exactly will I go about achieving that goal?
This is where a lot of resolutions and goals that are set at the beginning of the new year fall short. They don’t have enough detail in them and they don’t actually explain how one intends to achieve said goals and why you want it.
I’ve been basing the way I set goals on a model I found from one of Tony Robbin’s books. I’ve found it a great way to really make a detailed plan and once you’ve got a detailed plan it makes it far more easier to achieve them.
First of all check out this video clip of the man himself telling an interesting story and some great tips on how to achieve your goals.
How To Set Your Goals
- The first thing you need to do is actually write down your goals in the same way you’d normally do it. So maybe put a title for each but then write underneath or next to it write why you’ll achieve. So using the the ‘successful blog’ goal as an example you may put down for the reason why you’ll achieve it something like: “I’m motivated, I spend everyday working on my blog, I’m really passionate about it, I’ve got experience writing about this niche before, I’ve already got ‘x’ amount of followers..etc” Make sure you’ve got at least a few lines for each goal.
- The next step is to write down how you’ll experience when you actually achieve it. Again I want you to write a small paragraph putting in as much detail as possible. So using the example from earlier how will you know when you’ve got a ‘successful’ blog what will you experience? Maybe it;s more visitors, maybe more comments, what will you as an individual experience?
- The next step is to write down for each goal what resources you already have at your disposal that you can use to help you achieve your goals. Again going back to the blog example; if you’ve been blogging already one resource is the experience you’ve gained already.
- Now you’ve identified what resources you have under your belt I want you to write down times when you’ve actually utilised these resources skilfully. Back to our example, taking the resource of experience you may have used that experience to gain ‘x’ amount of followers on your blog in the last ‘x’ amount of time.
- I now want you to think about what type of person you’d need to be to actually achieve these goals. So using our example of the blogging goal you may want to put things down like ‘passionate’, ‘self motivated’, ‘hard working’ …you get the idea.
- Now the next step is a really key one. You now need to write down the what prevents you from having the things you desire right now? Again using our example it maybe things such as procrastination, lack of time, fear of failure, fear of being judged etc List all the things that are currently holding you back.
- Now you know what is holding you back you can write a step by step plan to achieve each goal. Just bullet point each step you need to achieve that will allow you to ultimately attain your main goal.
- Finally I want you to write down your ideal day but make it sensory specific so write down the things you see, hear, what you experience during that day once you have achieved your goal. This one will help you visualise your goal, but you need to be quite detailed so make it at least a couple of paragraphs long.
There are a couple of other steps which involve ‘modelling’ which I’ve chosen not to include as I don’t want the post to be too lengthy, but if you’re desperate for me to include them give me a shout in the comments section and I’ll write them up in there for you.
Hopefully you found it useful and a lot better than simply writing a list of things you want to achieve in 2012 with out any real purpose on how you’re going to achieve them.
As always let me know what you think.
Great post. You know I love this stuff. I did this when I was looking for a new job. It worked.
I know you found it useful, I remember ages ago you coming into Lyods bar in Huddersfield with a folded up bit of paper with your goals for the new year written down. Then I sent you the ones I had done following this method and you were like whoa! Ha ha.
I feel like it is so important to set attainable goals. When people set these hugely outrageous goals for themselves, they set themselves up for failure. If anything, set smaller, more easily attainable goals that will help you reach that larger goal.
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Twitter: @GlamKitten88
Definitely the key to achieving is setting something that is attainable rather than going for something outrageous.
This is super useful. It can be extremely difficult to actually keep & achieve the goals once you set them. I have to agree with Bonnie, and saying that one way to success is setting attainable goals. People are so quick to give up if they don’t see instantaneous results. Great tips!
Yeah so small chunking your goals and making easily attainable steps is the key to achieving them
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ooh, i’ll have to read this later! RT @arashmazinani How To Set Goals & Actually Achieve Them: http://t.co/HopaBF2l
Great post! Thanks for the advice! I really need to sit down and write out my “job goals.” Also I find that publicly announcing goals or resolutions helps you stick to them.
Happy New Year! Best wishes in 2012!
Yeah that is another thing you can do, publicly announcing them puts that little bit of pressure on you to actually go out and achieve them.
Arash,
I’ve been doing a similar thing, which ironically is partially why I haven’t been blogging as often. One of my goals was to focus on content, while keeping other parts of my life rich. I found it very useful to really break it down.
Just yesterday one of my best friends told me that one of his last assignments in school was to write his bio 10 years into the future, then examine what he’s doing in his life now to make that future happen. I’ve been mentally doing the same. If you don’t know where you want to go, you’ll never have any idea how to put a plan to get there.
Good read, as always. Happy New Year!
xo,
f
How have you found that? Focusing strictly on content?
Hi Arash,
I’ve been enjoying it and it’s taken the (self-imposed) pressure off having to take a picture daily and the stress of uploading every day. I have high standards for aesthetics and copywriting and felt that it was going to start suffering because I just didn’t have the ability to juggle it all. I also really wanted to provide a richer experience. The blogs that I haven’t lost interest in over time have a nice balance of fashion and stories. I found myself getting a little bored with just OOTD blogs, which in turn was making me less excited about just posting photos of me. I’d rather be validated for writing something that touches people, or makes them laugh, or think longer about a topic. I’ve taken additional steps to stop paying attention to follower count or any of that. What’s amazing is how many people come up to me at work or from my extended social circle and tell me that the read my blog religiously and love it. These people have never publicly commented or followed, which makes me feel like unless you’re looking to monetize, maybe that’s not all that important after all. Either way, I’m proud of what I’m doing these days. I do wish I had more time but I’d rather blog less, with consistent quality, then to burn out.
xo, f
Exactly, unless you’re looking to monetize then you can forego certain aspects that are associated with a typically ‘successful’ blog. I’ve noticed a lot Outfit of the day (OOTD) bloggers that I’ve been following over the last year have either slowed down or just exhausted the concept. Their blog have now expanded and become general ‘lifestyle’ blogs rather than fashion. I’ve always wondered how some of them do it posting a new outfit every day or week with brand new clothes. It’s not really something that I advocate as they must go through clothes really quickly, or have a huge wardrobe. Although, that’s not to say I don’t enjoy reading and following the blogs.
@arashmazinani A nice breakdown on goal setting: How To Set Goals & Actually Achieve Them – http://t.co/EaSJEZ1X