How To Cultivate Successful Goal Setting

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I am always amused by those who bustle around furiously in the days leading up to New Year’s Day, scrambling to think of what personal goals they should set for the upcoming year.

As if you can dissect the results of a whole year and project a new ideal for the whole next year in just a few days time.

Bless them for doing what they believe is self-improvement.

It’s true that small steps in the right direction are better than none at all.

However it makes me sad to think about how few of those hasty goals are actually accomplished.

I speak from experience; I used to frantically try to come up with a worthy last-minute goal, write it down, and then try to work on it during the next year.

My efforts usually lasted until mid-January…..

I have reflected a lot about goal setting over the years and studied successful people and their goal-setting habits.

It seems successful people have an entirely different algorithm that they use, and the very process is what sets them apart.

Their process IS what makes them successful versus wishful.

There are only three simple parts of this goal setting process, yet most people are not willing to expend the effort to maintain this simple system.

Unsuccessful people see this process as too much work and too much time.

They then proceed to set annual goals that fail every year.

Successful people know that this process is KEY and they follow it every day of their lives.

1- Meditation

Whether you want to call it meditation, introspection, pondering, or reflection, the first step of this process is mentally reviewing where your health, mind, and heart are right now.

The very first step HAS to be understanding yourself right now.

Create a daily habit of removing all distractions, and take ten minutes (or longer) every single day to ponder your feelings towards yourself, others, and your goals.

Identify struggles you are having.

Notice what thoughts keep coming to you.

Allow your mind to focus inward and not outward.

Never dismiss or ignore your own feelings.

Respect them and try to understand them.

Practicing meditation every day will open up channels of communication within you that you never even knew existed.

You will come to understand truths about yourself and others that you can’t understand any other way.

You will begin to appreciate yourself as you review your actions and realize how hard you are actually working each day to develop into your best self.

It will give you a healthy outlet to review your negative thoughts and feelings and allow them to leave your mind by your own conscious choice.

2- Practice Seeking Positive Energy and Removing Negative Energy

Always look for the good in your thoughts and feelings.

You will be shocked how much positivity already exists in your life.

Learn to identify and be grateful for the positive emotions and people in your life.

It is also important to identify and deal with negative emotions in a healthy way.

One of the best conferences I have ever been to had the audience perform a mental exercise silently together.

We closed our eyes and lowered our head as the instructor walked us through the process.

He told us to recall a traumatic time when someone said something hurtful to us that negatively impacted us.

He gave us time to think about the situation and asked us to think about details and how the situation made us feel.

He told us to mentally gather up all of the negative emotions (anger, jealousy, envy, rage, frustration, hurt feelings) and put them in an imaginary cup of water.

Then he told us to imagine we were in our kitchen with the stove burner turned on to the highest heat setting it would go.

As we reflected and honored the feelings we had about the situation, he told us it was time in our life to let those feelings go.

We were to mentally pour out the water and negative emotions onto the hot burner and listen to it fizzle and splutter as it completely disintegrated.

Our cups were now empty and our minds were now rid of the negative emotions.

I. Can’t. Believe.

How. Well. It. Worked!!!

I was a little skeptical at first and had never been walked through something like that before but I was astonished that it worked and worked well!

The negative experience I let go of was a small one, but it had stayed with me (obviously) because I was able to recall it when the instructor asked me to.

Sometimes I don’t thing we even realize just how many negative emotions we are actually carrying around with us.

It is a silent and invisible burden unless we purposefully seek it out and eliminate it.

Our minds are FAR more powerful than any of us know.

I have used that mental imagery with other problems in my life and it has worked for me every time if I put in the sincere effort and meditation to do so.

Rather than try to cultivate enough positive energy to cover up all of your negative energy, seek out the negative energy, honor it, and remove it from your life.

How much farther would your positive energy go if it wasn’t trying to compete with so much negative energy?

3- Review Your Goals Every Day

At the end of your meditating process, take a few minutes to review your short-term and long-term goals.

Keep a visual reminder of your goals to look at every day.

This can be a vision board, checklist, calendar app reminder, whatever visually works best for you and your situation.

Identify where you are today in the process of each goal, and where you want to be by the end of the day.

Successful people focus DAILY on their goals and adjust them as needed.

When we examine them every single day in a thoughtful way, we begin to see ways to accomplish our goals that we never would have before (if we slapped them together at the beginning of the year and then never looked at them again until the year was over).

By thoughtfully and intentionally reviewing and adjusting them every single day, we will begin to appreciate our progress, witness our own growth, and see phenomenal personal results all stemming from the daily habits we cultivate.

New Year Goals become New Day Goals, every day of the year.

As we focus our time and efforts to goal setting this season, let’s make sure that our first goal is to create daily habits that will support and sustain our efforts throughout the year.

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All of our Love and Best Wishes to you for a Happy, Healthy, Beautiful, and (Goal) Prosperous New Year!!