Why setting goals to help us move forward

And just like that, we are another week ahead of where we were last week. I want to now focus on how we do move forward. What we have done previously is create intentions and asked ourselves that question “What do I want this to be about?” and ‘this’ for me at this moment is this time of lockdown, the change in our economics, a change in who we are as families, how we react and wanting all of those things to come into line to create movement forward. First of all, we created our intentions having some real clarity about what we wanted this time to be about.

I shared with you last time about my intention around this time is about keeping connected by protecting, promoting, and preserving all the things that are important to me as I create my pathway forward. SO how we did that was we went through that 3-step process.

The first thing is to MINE so I mined for what I wanted to protect, promote, and preserve. Then I defined the areas to focus on and thirdly I shined my statements of intent ensuring that they were both succinct and generous – succinct meaning 9 words or less and generous meaning each word captures something very important to me and that I know exactly what I mean by it. Our statements of intention become our umbrellas and we can then decide what sits underneath those things in order for us to set some goals to ACTION us forward.

How do we set goals?

It’s a really interesting thing if we focus on it and goals are important in all areas of our lives. We often think about them in a business sense however we need to be setting goals in every area of our life. From setting goals in every area, you will find that there are some overlaps and that’s where our intense work is done to get the best bang for our buck! As we set our goals, we go to our umbrella statement of intention and say in order to create that as my truth and as my reality, what areas do I need to focus on? We start to break it down a little bit and find the areas for very specific focus. With my statement of intention around connecting, promoting, protecting, and creating a pathway forward, there are several things that fall out that need specific goals around them.

Creating a pathway forward

The first is around being connected – so that connection, it was important to me that I identified

Who I wanted to be connected with, so there’s a goal around that.

Protecting – it is important that there is a goal around what it is that I wanted to protect.

Promoting the pathway forward – there are 2 goal areas, the first is I need to define WHAT my pathway forward is and the 2^nd thing is how best to promote that.

Out of that one statement of intent, I ended up with 4 goal areas. I need to set a goal for each of those areas and I use the SMART formula which I think is really helpful.

Use the SMART formula to create SMART Goals

The first thing around SMART if you haven’t worked with it before, is the ‘S’ and the ‘S’ is for SPECIFIC. The more specific we are about what it is that we want to achieve, the more likely we are to get there because we can create the picture around what ‘specific’ looks like. The ‘M’ is for MEASUREABLE so right from the beginning we work out how am I going to measure my traction, my action, my accomplishments towards achieving this goal? The third is the ‘A’ and that is for ATTAINABLE and I think attainable is really interesting because I think often, we will choose the low-hanging fruit – the stuff that we do normally, everyday and achieve it with ease. Attainable means, we set it high enough to challenge us but not so high that we can’t achieve it. I see high enough to challenge myself – I’m on my tip-toes reaching standing up, reaching reaching reaching as high as I possibly can knowing that I can get that goal if I keep my foot on the pedal.

‘R’ is REALISTIC and this is an interesting one because it means I can achieve it giving current circumstances. An example of unrealistic is my husband set a goal for himself during this lockdown period because he wasn’t able to work and he wanted to life the ceilings in the apartment upstairs. That would’ve been fine if he had access to the equipment that he needed to do. So, while it was attainable, it wasn’t realistic because the shops were closed and he wasn’t able to get the material he needed to do it. So realistic means everything can line up in order for it to happen.

The final one is ‘T’ and that’s for TANGIBLE – what will I have, what will I be at the end of achieving the goal?
Tangible is kind of easy when we are looking at doing something. This might be my goal is “ By the end of the month I will have built a table’ so the tangible outcome of that is going to be a table. If I’m working on the softer skilled goals so it might be creating a different relationship with somebody that I work with or somebody that is in my family perhaps. It’s harder to identify what tangible is, so I ask myself, “What will I hear that is different as I achieve this goal, what will I see that is different? We start to create little hooks so that we will know what the tangible outcome is for every goal. So – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and tangible.

Let’s make sure that each goal statement is SMART. I use a really interesting formula that seems to work very well and it’s quite simple because I don’t think we need to make it complicated.

We work with 3 things. The first is we work with a specific date because it’s all very well to say “By the end of this year I will…” but if we put a specific date say the 30^th November, I know that I’ve got a defined timeframe to work within which will allow me to really portion out the actions that I need to take in order to achieve the goal, The 2^nd thing is knowing what it is that I am going to do so ‘I will…” and there are 2 parts to that often. It might be talking about the action so that’s a verb, a doing word, or it’s talking about something that I will have, e.g. by the 30^th of November, I will have made a table, so we will know exactly what we are aiming for and it’s very specific.

The 3rd part of it that is most important to me is the ‘Why bother?’ the ‘So what?’ around it. We keep a very personal link to our goal. So we set the date (by the 30^th of November), I will (have built a table out of natural timber), so that (what’s my personal why bother?), so that I have something that I am very proud of that I made myself (knowing that I am quite challenged in that area). With that personal link – when the going gets tough I know that my why bother is really encouraging me to find confidence in doing something that I’m really not confident in.

As we set goals, we need to take that time to think, what do I want it to be about so create the intention, we make sure our goals are SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and tangible. We use that formula using 3 specific things, by… identify a date, I will… what will you have or what will you have become, so that… my personal why bother, my personal link into that goal. Once we have done that and what we will talk about next time, is how you plan your actions; we actually make these things happen.

The 3 things to remember

The 3 things to remember from this week – the 1st thing is to create your goals from your statements of intent, remember they’re the umbrella. The 2^nd thing is to make them SMART but keep them very personal, know your ‘why’ – it doesn’t matter if it is a business goal, keep it personal, understand what your skin in the game is. And the 3^rd thing is to get excited about it. The more excited you are about your goal, the more you can visualize it and then the more you will actualize it. As we head on down this pathway to level 2, all sorts of things are going to change. I’m excited about what you are going to achieve with your goals. I’m looking forward to hearing how you are going. Take care.