Happy New Year from Our Team at KCC!
We hope this new year brings incredible success in both your work and personal lives. It’s a joy every time we help our clients achieve their goals, and we can’t wait to see what wonderful journeys we’ll be part of this year.
5 Steps to Set Goals You Can Achieve This Year
Whether or not you’re a fan of setting New Year’s resolutions, the beginning of the year is a perfect time to revisit your goals and evaluate your direction and your progress. Are you happy in your current role at work? Do you have health issues you’ve been meaning to address but keep putting off?
Setting goals sometimes feels daunting, especially if the goal involves significant changes. Thankfully, you can take specific steps to make achieving those goals more manageable and more likely. Here are 5 ways to set goals you can accomplish this year.
1. Be Specific and Intentional.
Making vague plans for positive life changes is easy, but those loose ideas can leave us without momentum. Specifics and a meaningful outcome provide a motivating finish line. Getting started is much easier when you connect your goals to your “WHY” and know exactly how far you need to go. It also makes the goal more real and more personal. Here are some examples.
Vague: Lose weight.
Specific: Lose ten pounds by June first to get my health back on track.
Vague: Get promoted.
Specific: Advance to a level three engineer by September to feel more fulfilled at work.
2. Break It Down and Habit Stack.
One mistake we sometimes make when goal-setting is not breaking a goal down into small steps. These bite-sized steps make even the most challenging goals more manageable. Instead of holding the whole project in your head, you can focus on one step at a time. I use a technique called habit stacking. For example, for my goal of getting super fit in 2025, one action step I implemented was to do counter push-ups and tricep dips every morning while my coffee brews. Much easier, right?
3. Write It Down and Keep It Visible and Trackable.
Have you heard the expression, “out of sight, out of mind”? Don’t let your goals fall into that trap. Keep them in sight. Post a reminder on your bathroom mirror. Write it on your calendar. Set a reminder to pop up on your phone when you are most likely to need it. I recently started using an app called Structured to organize and track my daily and weekly action steps, and I love it!
In a study by Dr. Gail Matthews at Dominican University in California, she found that participants were 42% more likely to achieve goals committed to writing.
4. Keep It Positive.
When it comes to achieving goals, your self-talk is essential. It can feel overwhelming or discouraging if you miss a milestone, experience a slip-up, or encounter a setback.
However, multiple studies have shown that guilt isn’t a very effective motivator, even for ourselves. Positivity is much more effective at getting us back on track, and achieving objectives is a lot easier when we’re energized.
Think about how you frame your goals. For example, if your goal is cleaning out your closet, think about how it will feel to open it and see it neat and organized and only containing items useful to you. It feels great, right?
If you set aside some time to start decluttering your closet and have to reschedule due to an urgent matter, don’t be discouraged. Celebrate the steps you’ve already taken on the project, even if the only step you’ve completed is rescheduling another “date with your closet” in your calendar.
5. Create Accountability: Say it Out Loud.
It doesn’t only take a village to raise a child. No matter our ages, we all function better when we have a supportive community. Similarly, we’re more likely to achieve our goals when we have accountability from people we care about and trust.
Accountability takes lots of different forms. Perhaps you have a friend or mentor who would make an excellent accountability partner. Perfect! You can also join a class targeted at people with similar goals. For example, you might choose an exercise or healthy cooking class to help connect you with people with similar health and lifestyle goals. A business course or workshop can help you connect with people who share career advancement goals. Remember to use the “say it out loud” method. By communicating your goals and action plans to others, you increase your chances of following through, as it fosters accountability.
Next Steps
Setting goals and creating a map from here to the finish line of success can seem useless or boring for some of us. Sometimes, we know what we want but need tools and support to find the most effective path forward. Knowing you are open to getting support is a great place to begin and a perfect place to bring in one of our certified coaches. Book an exploration call to discover how we can help you achieve your goals this year. Happy New Year!
You can learn more about crafting a sustainable work-life balance in my book, 21 Days to Happiness. Each day of the 21-day journey identifies an area of our lives that contributes to our overall happiness and teaches what we can do to start living happier lives today.
