You don’t become what you want; you become what you focus on! November is the time of the year when I always stress the importance of setting your goals for the coming year. Why November? Most people sit down and do their goal setting at the beginning of January. Some people set obligatory New year’s resolutions. In my humble opinion, I think that’s too late. By January, you are already in it. Our brains need time to get into gear with our goals. It needs time to focus on the mindset of achieving those goals, and that takes time. If we set our goals in January, we don’t start working towards them until February, and we have lost precious time. Make it a habit to set your goals with enough time to adjust your efforts.
So why are goals important? They are essential because, in life and business, there are various moving parts. We have personal goals related to relationships, body image, time management, habits, and mindset. We have sales and marketing, systems, customer relationships, finance, operations, and leadership in business. We need to clear the chatter, focus on our tasks, provide vision and motivation to our team, get through the challenging moments, and measure our success along the way. Let’s take a look at each of those and apply them accordingly.
Just the act of developing our plans forces us to examine each sector of our life or business. We have to sit down and think about what we are trying to achieve. Optimally, we set a goal using the SMART method. This method makes sure our goals are:
As a leader, our ability to relay the business’s vision or goals is imperative to its success. If there is no goal or vision, what is everyone working towards? These goals provide the framework and motivation to keep moving forward. By recognizing and/or sharing the goals and vision with the team, the leader in providing a chance for buy-in from all involved.
The goals give the “all for one, one for all” mentality, that we are all in this together, we are all on the same side working for the greater good!
Goals are meant to push you outside of your comfort zone, challenge you to be better, do more, and grow. All of these are hard, frustrating, stressful, and test our limiting belief systems. Inherently, our brains don’t like change, and we are forcing it upon ourselves and possibly our team. Having clear, focused goals provide the light at the end of the tunnel to help us push through those stressful moments.
Through goals, we can manage our progress. Ingrained within the process of setting and achieving a goal is tracking. Tracking our progress helps us stay accountable, it helps keep us motivated, and it helps us celebrate the many small steps we must take to succeed.
I suggest you take a minute or two to sit down and think about the different areas of your life, business, or both and set smart goals you desire to accomplish in 2021. Without these moments of concentration, the year goes by in a flash with no direction from you like a wayward child running circles in the backyard. Cute, but not functional. It is your responsibility to design your life, so do it with intention! How do you want your year to progress, what do you want to achieve, or how can you do it better or more efficiently? You get to decide!
