How are your business New Year Resolutions doing?

It is often the case that people set New Year resolutions, either for business or personal use, and find that they do not keep them going for as long as they intended. I thought now would be a good time to share my thoughts on why this is.

The reason I am writing this article is that the same happens for people setting business goals as for people setting New Year resolutions.

To be truly effective a goal needs to be seen as a commitment to change. You need to want the change in yourself to get the outcome. Many people set the goal based on the outcome they want to achieve but do not attach themselves to it emotionally. To really set a goal that will result in a positive change you need to understand why you want it and ask yourself what do I need to change about myself that will enable the goal to be achieved.

This is the emotional attachment that is required as emotion is energy in motion. This energy is you committing to the goal and the change required to make it happen. Something to be aware of is that change leads to perturbation. Perturbation is a state of mental pressure that HAS to be experienced and channelled to enable break throughs to occur. Rather than finding this an uneasy mental stare, treat it as a positive and welcome it. An ideal way to look at perturbation is to consider it as the fire that forges your goals

So, if you look at this from another angle, every goal is an invitation to a higher level of self-responsibility. If you do not take on the additional responsibility, which we know is the state of being able to think pro-actively as a situation and set plans to succeed then the goal will remain as a dream that you do not engage on a plan to achieve. This will cause goal setting to fail. So do the opposite!! 😊

A leading Action coach in New Zealand taught me that logic does not resolve why I don’t do things until it addresses the emotion that stops me doing things. I have to tackle my beliefs about a situation to engage and connect on an emotional level to be able to drive change that will move me to a different place or state and this change will result in actions that facilitate goal achievement. Does this make sense to you? Can you do more connecting at an emotional level to your dreams and asses what you have to change in you to create success?

There are two types of goals. These are Away from goals and Towards goals. Different people tend to be more able to connect emotionally with one or other of these.

If Away from thinking is your natural state you are likely to think about what you need to do to avoid, fix or prevent a problem occurring. The emotional driver is likely to be what will be the consequence of me NOT achieving this goal.

If Towards thinking is your natural state you are likely to think about what you can achieve, what you want or what you will gain. The emotional driver is likely to be the opportunity created by achieving the goal

A word of caution!! Watch for the invisible I will do anything but….. !! Many people are naturally programmed to use thinking that avoids the elephant in the room. This is the thing they believe is not something they want to do or a behaviour they do not want to adapt. If you have any of these you will have to think about it at a belief level and change your belief about this. If not, you will compromise your chances of success. A way to do this is to Re-programme your mind through a combination of self-talk and Idealisation, Visualisation, Verbalisation and Materialisation. This is a topic for another article but if this is of interest to you please contact me.

A well set goal is an inevitability as you can set a plan to achieve an outcome. If you cannot see the likely outcome from a strategy you need to learn how to use the strategy – test and measure! Set up for success which is a process not an event.

If this is not the case for you at present the first plan you set should be to learn how to use strategies through creativity, test and measure so you can predictably link activity to results. Then you can use that strategy and set a plan that achieves your goals confidently and consistently.

I hope this helps you get back on track with your resolutions for 2020 😊

If you would like to discuss how any of the above can help you achieve more business success please contact me on 07511 969690 or at rogerpemberton@actioncoach.com and I will hold a complimentary coaching session with you on goal achievement.

Thanks for reading