Why you need to set your goals for 2019 NOW
If I said to you that if you set your goals and intentions on the 1st of January 2019 you would be more likely to fail you would accuse me of setting negative intentions and sending out negative vibes into the universe thus actually causing the failure in the first place.
- The truth is that if you sit down on the 1st of January you are more likely to:
- Set general goals rather than be specific to what your real needs are
- You will set the same goals as last year
- Your friends and family will be more influence as everyone is talking goals
- You won’t put enough effort into plans and are more likely to fail due to that
And the list goes on.
To set goals and intentions that you can actually achieve you need to actually work out many different elements.
To get you going here are questions I ask clients:
- What is the outcome you want to achieve?
- Why do you want to achieve this?
- How much time do you realistically have over the 12 months to achieve this?
- Can you afford to reach this goal?
- Is your goal realistic?
I then get them to write out their goal.
And then BREAK IT DOWN.
Here’s an example.
Let’s say Sara wants to open up her own Bakery.
She wants to open it as she already bakes from home so this is progression.
She has £10,000 investment available from family.
That’s all awesome.
- What Sara needs to start with is:
- Where is there a demand for a bakery in her area.
- How many sales does she need to make to actually make this a realistic business venture?
- How much can she expect to pay in rent?
- What are the bills like?
- What is her current cash flow like with business.
- Whilst she’s working on opening her business can she afford to hire someone to run the home business?
What costs can she expect in kiting out the shop?
As you can see Sara needs to do a LOT OF RESEARCH. In my opinion it’s the most important stage that can make or break a business idea.
As Sara works she needs to fit this in around her business hours.
Once she blocks out her work time, family time and other commitments she’ll know how much time she has to actually carry out the research (and also see if she has enough capacity to do this during the actual year or will she need to consider a 18 month plan).
Once she knows this she can break down what she needs to research and slot it into her calendar and tick off each task.
Steadily Sara will see her tasks go down and she’ll progress steadily towards her goal.
But if Sara sets a general goal and just writes down “my goal is to set up a bakery in 2019” she wouldn’t know where to start. She’s literally setting herself up to fail and come end of 2019 she’ll be setting the same goal and potentially repeating the same mistakes.
So what do you need to do today?
- Sit down and think about what you have achieved this year and what you set out to actually do during the year. Consider which of these goals you want to set for 2019 (if there are any).
- Break down the goal considering the time you have to achieve it (be realistic so you have more of a chance of achieving the goal).
- Put dates in your diary.
- Schedule ‘check ups’ during the year on your goal. I suggest once every 3 months. That was if you are behind schedule you can either look at catching up or potentially moving dates around to accommodate this. Either way we are looking at increasing your chances of successfully completing your goals.
It seems like a lot of work to do however this method increases your control on the goal achieving process and also will increase your confidence with goal setting as your success rate too.
And once you’ve done that you can sit back and watch others set out goals with no structure on the 1st of January 2019 and watch a lot of them give up by 1st of February.
What are your goals and intentions for 2019? Share them below.
