If you’ve ever fallen off the wagon with your goals in the past, I’ve got three tips for you here that will help you to stay motivated to achieve your goals.
If you’ve ever set new year’s resolutions in the past, you might be one of the many of us who have failed at their new year’s resolutions. In fact, a trending hashtag on social media in January is #resolutionfail. That’s because people start the new year off with high hopes and a lot of motivation to achieve their goals. But then towards the end of the month, or in February, they lose the motivation to achieve that goal.
Maybe they’ve decided to go to the gym, and they’re all pumped up and on January the first or the second they’re at their gym. But come February 1st, they might be sitting at home on the sofa, eating chips and watching Netflix whilst their running shoes are getting dusty. #resolutionfail!
I don’t want this to happen to you. If you’ve ever fallen off the wagon, with your goals in the past, I’ve got three tips for you here that will help you to stay motivated to achieve your goals.
1. Create a deep connection
The first tip is that you need to create a deep connection with why you want to achieve that specific goal.
On this goal planner (which you can get for free from Paper Me Pretty, our stationery site), there’s a section that has a space for you to fill out that says why this goal is important. And what you put here for why you want to achieve your goal is super important.
Forming a deeper connection
Say, for example, your goal is to jog three days a week. How can you form a deeper connection with why you want to achieve this goal? Maybe you think, “I just want to be more physically fit so I can enjoy my kids or my grandkids”. Or “I want to be around to see my great-grandkids”.
Whatever is your motivation for that goal, form a deep connection with it. When you have a deep connection with your goal it will help you push through tough periods. Because there will be times when you wake up in the morning, it’s freezing cold outside and possibly it’s chucking it down with rain. And you really don’t want to strap on your running shoes and head out the door. But if you have a really deep connection with why you want to go running that day, and you think “I want to see my grandkids when I get older”. Or “I want to be physically fit”. Or “It will mean so much to me when I cross the finish line at the marathon”. If you create a deep connection with that, you will have the motivation to head out the door even when it’s raining, cold, wet, and maybe your running buddy has texted you saying I’m staying in my bed because it’s cold and wet outside.
So if you have your own personal deep connection with why you want to achieve that goal that will help you to push through difficult periods of achieving that goal because in every goal, there’ll be periods where we don’t really feel like doing this thing today. So having a deep connection helps you to stay motivated.
2. Revisit your goal often
The second point I wanted to mention is that you need to revisit your goal often. This is perhaps the number one reason why resolutions fail is because people set resolutions, and then forget resolutions. They don’t keep revisiting what it is they resolved to do in the new year. And this is why goals are different from resolutions.
When you set a goal you create an action plan to achieve that goal. And it’s important that you revisit your goal often. So if you have your goal written out, it’s important that you look at it and review it often. Every day or at least once a week, you need to be looking at your goal and you need to need to be thinking “What can I do to move myself towards my goal this week?”. And because you’ll have your actions written down to help you get towards your goal, you can see what steps you can take to make progress. So revisit it often.
I recommend looking at your goal every day or at least every week. To help you keep it front and center. That way you don’t lose sight of what it is you want to achieve. So that’s number two.
3. Remember what’s at stake
And number three is that it’s important for you to remember what’s at stake. What would happen if you don’t achieve this goal? What’s at stake, if you do?
For example, if your goal is to save a deposit for your house by the end of the year, what’s at stake when you achieve that goal is that a new house is now an option for you! That’s an amazing thing to remember. You’ll be thinking, “I better put aside this money this month because I really want to get the new house that’s going to be open to us when we’ve got our deposit ready!”. So remembering what’s at stake is the third one.
The goal planner I mentioned in this post is yours free from our sister company Paper Me Pretty. The designs change every month, so yours might look different from the one pictured here. Click the button below to get yours today!
Conclusion
Just to recap, it’s important that you create a deep connection with why you want to achieve your goal. And that you revisit your goal regularly to remind yourself of what it is you’re going after. Also, you need to remember what’s at stake if you don’t achieve the goal. And what’s at stake when you do.
Let me know in the comments below your comments and thoughts or which of these helped you the most. And if you’d like to see more posts about goals, click here.
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