Goal setting has the power to transport you and your business to far-flung places. It equally has the power to leave you feeling frustrated, stuck and going nowhere.
With the continuing growth of Instagram and therefore the #humblebrag posts that come with it especially at the end or start of a new year, a less glamorous side of this trend is the increase in feeling inadequate and general shitness. This can be as true in how you feel about your personal life as you do in business.
Right now, social media is doing a mighty fine job of dishing up ‘new year, new me, new goal’ posts left right and centre along with the usual perfect strangers living perfect lives. Therefore I felt compelled to write a little something for those of you are catastrophising your current status and standing in your own way of achieving your goals for the year ahead.
You definitely don’t need me to tell you that mindset matters. And you definitely don’t need yet another blog telling you what you should’ve and could’ve been doing for the year so far (when it is only week three of the first month of the year).
Let’s be real here. The reality is that regardless of whether you’re a business owner or employee; the intensity of projects triple down at the home-stretch of the year. Then Christmas lockdown takes place, followed by that weird bubble of time before New Years when no one knows what day it is and it’s leftover for dinner again. And for the parents out there, school holidays run along side all of this and continue for an entire month and a half (I repeat an entire month and a half!).
So if your world is anything like mine, nothing much when it comes to actioning goals is happening at all. To think for a second that you can achieve change during this time of the year, is in my opinion at complete conflict with reality. In fact January, is probably the worst time to start anything new. Be it a health or fitness regime, new business plan, or…anything.
I’m personally not a fan of new years resolutions, or planning for the year ahead in December or January. There’s nothing worse for momentum and mindset than making plans for your life or your business that get broken, or are set up to fail or have you looking back on the year in a critical way.
So for those who might be feeling like the year is lost already, that nothing has changed, that the things you felt challenged by last year are haunting you in a groundhog day this year, then here are my ideas for you:
10 best hacks for feeling good about the year ahead.
1. Treat your goals like a work in progress, not a one-off event. Make time to review and plan for your business daily, weekly or monthly and adjust things as you go.
2. Stay focused on your ideal outcomes, not the obstacles.
3. Start asking yourself “how can I?” not “why can’t I?”
4. On a regular basis, write down everything you’ve achieved that makes you proud.
5. Stop thinking you’re running out of time. Instead, remind yourself that getting to where you want to go is not a race. You’re making progress every day and you’re doing things in your own time. (Repeat after me…).
6. Focus on one task and one goal at a time by blocking time against goals. Create uninterrupted time to intensely focus on one core objective at a time for a set amount of time to get shit done and as a result increase confidence.
7. The mind needs space to feel good and create. It needs peace and quiet to hear original thoughts that work for you, not against you. Take time to hear positive things whispering quietly in the background. These are often drowned out by boisterous, default negative thinking patterns.
8. Work on your passion projects every single week. Start doing the things you really want to do now. Move them forward, even in micro moments of time. Just start. Confidence and feeling good comes from progress, no matter how big or small. Working on things that truly matter will give you more energy to drive you forward when the boring but important things get tough.
9. Un-follow any social feed that depletes you. The curse of comparison is paralysing for general wellbeing, momentum and achieving your goals.
10. Equally, only follow people/businesses who inspire you or contribute positively to your self-belief and mindset.
Don’t get me wrong, I love asking big questions about what’s working and what’s not, as well as ending and starting new things. And I love creating opportunities to visualise the future, set goals, stay accountable and on track as well as look back at raraPR’s ‘Ta Da List’ (aka: what we did do, not what we didn’t). But you can choose to do this any day of the week, at any time that realistically fits into your life and not into the most unconventional, least methodical months of the year.
May we all move forward and reflect, strategise and plan how we want the day, week, year or years to unfold at the moments that fit in with your life most. And may you move forward from here, feeling good about the fact you are at the beach and right now, needing not to be anywhere else but there.
~ BY JADE ROBERTS, RARAPR FOUNDER/DIRECTOR
