Lynda Moore says achieving your goals might require some help from an accountability buddy, celebrating your wins, and most of all setting it up to enjoy the ride

Last week I talked about setting goals and putting some steps in place to help create them as well as a few ideas to help you achieve them. I thought I’d follow that up this week with more specific ideas on how to be successful in achieving them.

I’ve had a fantastic extended weekend away with some girlfriends doing a road trip to Golden Bay.  In between the usual secret girl talk (which of course will remain secret), the topic of our goals for the year came up.  Between the four of us, we have a lot of them.  I, of course, couldn’t help putting on my mentor hat, and ask the question. “How are you going to implement and stick to them”? There was a wide-eyed look, as if I was asking a silly question, and then after a bit of pondering and silence (most unusual for us). I was then asked to explain what I meant, as it did seem quite straight forward, we set our SMART goals, and away we go.

I thought I would share with you, what I shared with my girlfriends as they seemed to find it interesting and helpful, and I hope you do too.

Getting started can be the hardest part.  What is the first step you can do, and more importantly, when are you going to do it? You need to make a date with yourself to get your goal underway.  It can be as simple as doing a google search, that first press-up, or making your first sandwich since you were at school.  The sooner you get started the better, don’t wait three or four weeks, you will have lost interest by then.

We all have busy lives, working on our goals takes time.  Where are you going to find the time? You need to create it, and it needs to be non-negotiable.  If 7am on a Tuesday is your quite time to write your blog, then book the time out.  Tell the family you are in ‘do not disturb mode’. You might need to sort a few things out, so you aren’t disturbed, like, who is making breakfast?

Blocking time in a calendar, is one of the most powerful things we can do to help us achieve our goals, whether its on our phone, or on the wall, seeing time allocated helps keep you moving forward.

Even when we have clear goals, we can still set ourselves up for failure. Here’s an example.

We decide that we need to work on our flexibility as part of our fitness goal for the year.  So, we decide that we are going to do stretches/yoga morning and night to achieve that.

This is a great goal, but if we have been a bit hit and miss in our daily stretching, then to suddenly go from occasionally to seven days a week, is a bit of a stretch (no pun intended).  What happens if you sleep in on Monday morning, leap out of bed, head straight to the shower instead of the yoga mat.  You have failed. You’ll feel bad, and Tuesday morning it will be harder to get the motivation back.  Oh well, I’ve missed one day, what does it matter now, is how the thought process goes.

Start easy on yourself, aim for three days a week of morning and night stretching, split them up, so if you miss one morning or evening, you haven’t completely derailed your goal. Then once that habit is working for you, build up to four days a week and so on.

The same applies to achieving a money goal.  Making lunch five days a week, may be ideal for your bank account, but not for your life.  Start with a couple of days a week, get some successes under your belt first. Before going all out on the lunch making.

Giving ourselves small rewards along the way is also important.  Our little inner child gets bored easily and doesn’t like being deprived of fun. 

So, if one of your goals is something that isn’t exactly your idea of fun, you need to build in a reward to keep your inner child happy.

You are aligned with your overall goal of reducing your expenses but coming up with ideas and making up lunch three days a week, isn’t rocking your boat. Have a mini reward at the end of the second week to keep you motivated.

Try bundling your new activity with something else you are already doing.

You cook dinner, so make it a bit bigger, and put it aside for your lunch.  The dog has you trained on the daily walk, put the yoga mat on the floor before you go do some stretching when you get back.

I think this is one of the most important parts of achieving your goals. I know it works for me.

Accountability. Depending on what you goal is, will depend on who you share it with and who is holding you accountable.  For my business goals, it’s my business coach. 

You might want to add in more than one layer of accountability, a business coach, and your partner for example.

The key here is to choose carefully, if we have the wrong accountability partner, they can derail your goal rather than support it. Try someone out for the first three or four weeks and see how it goes.  If it works, great, if not, fire them and find someone else.

Why is this important? My mentor David Krueger explained it like this. Change back pressure often comes from those nearest and dearest to us. You have a fitness goal, so you start working out, your energy levels change, you start to feel differently about yourself, so you dress a bit differently, you might change your eating habits.  Meanwhile, you partner, or best friend is still the same. It shines a spotlight on them and their lack of activity, and you hear things like.  “I preferred the old you” or distracting you with other activities so you don’t go out for a run, you find yourself watching the latest Netflix movie instead.

For my personal goals, my accountability buddy is one of my girlfriends; but she is also working on her own goals, so we are both changing and holding each other accountable for doing what we say we are going to do and then checking in to make sure we do it.

Review your goals, celebrate your wins, and most of all enjoy the ride.

*Lynda Moore is a Money Mentalist coach and New Zealand’s only certified New Money Story® mentor. Lynda helps you understand why you do the things you do with your money, when we all know we should spend less than we earn. You can contact her here.