Do You Struggle with Setting Goals?

In this post I’ll show you an easy strategy that will bring you goal setting success. Goal setting can be a difficult hurdle to jump before you can start achieving real success, but it’s so important to do! It might seem daunting, but with this strategy you start with small, specific goals, and use your sense of accomplishment to do more and more.

Start by setting one specific goal. You’ll only have to start with this goal for one week. Then you’ll maintain it for the next week, while adding another goal by week two. Let’s break this down together.

The First Week and First Month

Here’s an example of a simple, obtainable goal. Let’s say you want to drink half your body weight in ounces of water each day. That’s one, specific goal. And notice it’s detailed, meaning it’s a particular amount. So you’ll set this easy goal, and it’s just for one week. And then, after just one week of maintaining that goal, you’ve had a success! It wasn’t hard, didn’t last long, but now you’re encouraged by your victory and feel better about adding on.

So you’ve made it one week with that one goal. When week two begins, you’ll still be drinking that amount of water daily, but in addition to that, you’ll add a second goal. For the second goal you might plan to take a walk two nights a week after dinner. Pretty simple. Just two nights a week, take a walk after dinner. If that’s not feasible for you, it could be before breakfast or midday—whatever works for you and your routine. But these goals are supposed to be simple and achievable. The activity -walking- is simple, and the timeline- after dinner- is specific. You could even add more specificity and say that you’ll always take this walk on Tuesdays and Fridays, or whichever days work best for you.

So, week one you drank water. Week two, you’re drinking water, plus taking walks after dinner. And for the rest of the month you just maintain those two goals. After the month is up, you can say that you’ve reached serious goal setting success. Now you’re more encouraged to add on new goals or increase the ones you have now.

Month Two

In the second month, continue drinking that amount of water and walking twice a week, but also pick up that book you’ve been meaning to read. You know the book I’m talking about. It’s the one that all your friends said was awesome, that you then bought on Amazon, and then let it sit around, totally unread.

Starting in the second month, you need to pick up that book, and just read three pages per day. Some of you might struggle with this. You’re going to want to read more than that; you might really get into it. But you should cut yourself off. Dedicate yourself to the goal, and show yourself that you can do those three pages per day throughout the entirety of the second month.

And by the end of that second month, you’ve continually accomplished three goals! Not only have you set specific goals, but they seem to be easy for you to accomplish. What you’re doing is creating easy, obtainable habits, that are still benefiting you, and giving you that sense of accomplishment.

Know Yourself and Stick to Your Strategy

Now, there are some people out there who will want to just go big or go home. And if you know that that’s you, then go ahead and go for the gold. But for most us, going a little bit at a time will build up the momentum that we need to push through, and obtain goals. It’s like a snowball effect. A little bit builds up more and more until you achieve huge success. That’s what this is all about.

Not only will you be astounded by your sense of accomplishment, but you’ll have the desire for more. You’ll have more joy in the time you’re taking for yourself and these little feats, which will become big victories over time.

I’ll admit it; I am that person who loves to go big or go home. But it can be a struggle because when I crash, I crash big. I fall so far, and so hard. So maybe I don’t have it all figured out. But I have things that I’ve started and maintained, and I know that if I can do it, you can do it too.

This is the best way to begin goal setting—small, specific tasks and adding only one or two per month. Are you ready to start kicking tail on goal setting?