Achieving Goals Is All About Attitude

Your mindset, beliefs, and feelings all work together to create your attitude. Your attitude influences your choices of action and responses to challenges. In regards to achieving goals, your attitude about goal setting that will make or break your ability to create goals and follow through with achieving them or not.

Holding a positive attitude towards goals and goal-setting will be a THE factor determining whether or not you achieve your goals.

Answering these questions will help you create positive attitudes about your goals and can propel you forward toward success.

How can your attitude hinder your success? What do you feel, think, and believe that may prevent you from achieving your objectives?
How can your attitude empower you? What are your most positive attitudes that have propelled you forward in the past? How did you approach your goal(s) at the time?
Do you feel that your prevailing attitude is helping you or limiting you? Why?
List a goal that you feel challenged to achieve.
What’s your attitude about this goal?
What specific challenges are preventing you from achieving your goal?
For each challenge, brainstorm possible solutions.
Pick your most viable solution, create a plan to implement it, and get started
Use Positive Self-Talk: What can you tell yourself to help you achieve the goal?
Take Control: What are some steps you can take to get control as you move toward your goal?
Compose your own affirmation that will help you work toward your goal.
Who can you talk to about your goal? Can you find a mentor who may be able to help you move forward? Who?

Often we are not aware of what our attitude is or how it is affecting us. Working with a coach who provides objective feedback can help uncover these blind-spots and get you moving forward. If you are struggling to set or achieve goals, why not take advantage of Laura’s FREE coaching session to discuss this. Just click on the link to the right and Laura will follow up with you immediately.

If you’re serious about taking life and business to the ‘next level’, book your Breakthrough-Now! session.

In this powerful session, you will leave with:

* new awareness of a blindspot that’s holding you back
* a renewed sense of energy for your business and leadership
* a key “next step” for moving forward

Click this link to my Calendly to book your session now

Laura Watson, ACC, MSW is the founder and lead business coach at Venture Coaching International in Calgary, AB. With over 25 years of counselling and business coaching experience, she helps owners and executives across N. America to improve their personal, communication and leadership effectiveness. Laura helps you:

> Uncover blind spots
> Regain focus and traction in your business
> Accelerate your results

If you’re interested in taking your business to the “next level”, call Laura at: 403 669 8684 or book a meeting directly on Calendly.

The Science of Goal Setting

Goal setting seems simple on the surface. You define what you’d like to accomplish and take the necessary steps to make those accomplishments a reality.

Setting and achieving a goal is more than simply deciding and wishing. Each year, millions of people set New Year’s resolutions. Few of those people are still on track after just 10 days.

If setting and achieving goals were easy, there would be more happy, successful people running around. How many people do you know who are happy and pleased with their lives? Not very many. If you’re looking to take your life and business to the “next level” you need to master setting and achieving goals.

Set goals and achieve them more reliably:

Set goals that are meaningful. Many people waste time with goals that don’t mean very much to them. Life is short, so create goals that fill you with excitement when you think about achieving them. Reaching any goal requires change, and humans are innately resistant to change. Big changes require a lot of motivation. Set goals that mean a lot to you.
Use small, incremental behavioral changes. Change can be done easily if the changes are small. This requires patience.

Imagine someone attempting to make an overnight change from a diet of fast food, soda, potato chips, and ice cream to one of beans, vegetables, and fruit. His mind and body would revolt. It’s far easier to make small changes each week until the transformation is complete.

Be accountable. Rewards are pleasant and effective if the reward continues. Behavioral changes tend to extinguish when rewards are no longer provided. It can be more effective to make yourself accountable for your poor behavior. For example, each time you skip going to the gym, you give $10 to a charity you don’t like or you wash a friend’s car.

Negative consequences are more motivating for many people. Use this fact to your advantage. How could you punish yourself for non-compliance? Make a list of at least 10 ways.

Keep goals believable. Is it possible to increase your earnings from $50k this year to $1 million? It’s possible, but it’s not likely. And if you believe it’s unlikely, you’re unlikely to even try. The perfect goal is challenging, but not so challenging that you feel overwhelmed.
Track your progress. Measuring your progress is extremely important. It provides information on how well you’re doing. You can’t know if you’re making progress toward your goal if you don’t measure it. You can shift your strategy if you realize that you’re not doing well.

It can also provide a boost of enthusiasm and positivity. When you’re making progress, you feel excited.

Be prepared for setbacks. Achieving any goal is rarely a smooth process. There will be bad days with poor results. Rather than reject your goal when the going gets tough, be prepared for failures.

Have a plan in place to deal with failure and frustration. You might call a friend or remind yourself of the purpose of achieving the goal. Reviewing your success so far can also help.
It also pays to take preventative action. For example, if you know you’re likely to cheat on your diet later in the evening, have some healthy snacks available that you enjoy. Or head to bed earlier and enjoy some extra free time in the morning.

Goals are necessary if you want to consciously change your life. Everything else is a matter of luck and circumstance. Most people struggle to set and achieve goals. I frequently help business owners set and take action on goals so they can move forward, faster!

If you’re struggling to set goals or to follow through with them, download our FREE Goal Achieving Workbook.