Set Your Goals & Achieve Them!

Why not make 2013 the time to set your goals, take action on those goals and most importantly, achieve your goals. A Forward Focus Life Coach can get you there.

Many of us may have begun the year making sincere New Year's resolutions with the desire to make changes. However, something always seems to stop us from seeing our resolutions to successful completion.

Real change is not only hard work, but requires a sense of commitment and tenaciousness that is difficult for us to achieve on our own.

We set goals such as:

"I want to lose weight and exercise more."

"I want a different career or a better job."

"I want to start a new business."

"I want to find a fulfilling relationship."

"I want to spend more time with family and friends."

The difficulty comes when we try and take action after we have set our goals. Without a true sense of direction, guidance and inspiration, we founder and the ambitious goals we set fade away like a wispy puff of smoke.

This is where a Life Coach comes in.

I can help you overcome the challenges that prevent most from moving forward with their goals. By understanding the Ericksonian principles that state:

Change is inevitable and people are not frozen in time

People have all of the necessary resources within them

People will make the best choice available at any given moment

People act, initially, with the best intentions

People are ok, whole and complete just as they are

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A Life Coach Can Help You Set Your Goals and Achieve Them

Remember what I said on the page, titled What is Coaching?

I wrote that coaching is all about asking powerful questions and listening to what you have to say.

By asking questions about your goals (wants)and actively listening to your answers, we can begin establishing a basis to set your goals and attune them to your values and emotions.

Here is a brief example of questions I might ask when setting your goals. We'll use weight loss in this exercise:

Coach: "Just suppose it's forty minutes from now and you have had a really terrific result from our session, what might that be?"

Client: "I want to lose weight this year, so a plan to lose weight would be a terrific result."

Coach: "What would that give you that's important to you?"

Client:"I would feel wonderful, have self confidence and feel like a new me."

Coach: "Ok. Imagine for a moment that it is a year from now and you feel wonderful, have self confidence, feel like a new you. Looking back to where you started, how much weight would you have lost?"

Client: "hmm, fifteen pounds would be perfect."

Coach: Terrific. So, if we were to spend the next 30 minutes exploring how you might develop a plan to lose 15 pounds so that you can feel wonderful, have self confidence and feel like a new you, would that be of value to you?"

Client: "Absolutely!"

Coach: "Excellent. Then let's get started."

That was a very quick and simplified example of how a coaching session might begin. In an actual session, many more questions would have been asked. However, you can see from the example that all of the questions were open-ended and based strictly upon the client's answers.

By setting your goals and linking them with emotion, values and future projection, a coach can clarify your goals and guide you toward their achievement.

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Steps to Begin Setting Your Goals

The first step in setting your goals is to establish what it is that you want; no, what you REALLY want. You see, many people use generic goals that are more ideas than goals. Goals such as, "I want more money. I want a better job. I want to start a new business. The list goes on and one. One of the most popular is, "I want to lose weight."

Those are all wonderful aspirations and goals I hear from people every day. The challenge with those statements is that they are concepts with no real substance. Why? Because, for it to be a goal or desire that is actually attainable, you have to get smart with it. SMART as in:

• S pecific?
• M easurable?
• A chievable?
• R elevant/Realistic?
• T ime-bound?

Scroll up to the coaching example I gave above. Notice that the client started with a concept in mind for their goal, which to them, really WAS a goal. The coach asked a few open-ended questions to determine the importance of the goal, asked the client to attach value and feeling to their goal, then asked the client to get specific about their goal.

Because of the questions, the client was able to move toward a real goal. The client went from the concept of losing weight to a specific and relevant amount that was perfect for them. They started getting SMART.

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Specific: To set your goals, let's stick with weight as an example. If you want to lose weight, ask yourself, "What will losing weight give me that is so important?"

Important note: Brainstorm, here. Do not judge what comes to your mind. Write down whatever appears, no matter how odd it may seem. For example, some people might say that they would feel better, or they would have more confidence.... things like that. Just be sure to capture your thoughts immediately and whatever comes to your mind. VERY important. Say it out loud if that would help.

Next, do something similar to the example above: Imagine a time in the future where and when you HAVE lost weight, have the feelings/images/ideas you captured in your brainstorm session. How much weight would the future you have lost to feel that way? Once again, write down whatever feels right and DO NOT JUDGE. Just write.

Now you have gotten specific and linked some values, feelings and beliefs to your goal. If you can imagine, completely and fully, what it would feel like to have reached your goal, then those links can acts as anchors to hold you firm toward your goal.

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