Reimagining goals: Make them personal!

GOALS – It’s Personal!

As another year draws to a close, our brain’s desire for certainty and social advancement has us contemplating our goals for the coming year. Effective goal setting, despite often being a work-related task, is very much a personal experience. If your goals aren’t meaningful to you personally, you aren’t likely to achieve them. Research suggests several key factors contribute to successful goal achievement:

1. The importance of the desired outcomes
2. A belief that the goal is possible to achieve
3. The commitments we make to others
4. Our ability to regularly imagine and feel what success looks like.

 To what extent do your goals for 2022, reflect these 4 characteristics?

Chemistry of success

There is nothing more uninspiring than being given goals set by someone else, to benefit someone else.  However, many of us have that experience regularly at work. Neuroscience studies show that there is an optimum brain state perfect for goal pursuit; A highly rewarding, high motivation sweet spot that we can consciously shift into by focusing on what is meaningful and important to us, to achieve.  The more your goals align with what you truly care about, the more likely you are to shift into that optimum brain chemistry when actively working toward your goals. Setting and achieving goals – is a very personal business!

Make your goals personal

4 ways to ensure your goals are deeply important to you include:

1. Get clear on what your key values are in your career and life and look for ways to align your goals with those key values.
2. Make a list of how you will benefit from achieving your goals? Be very specific about what you will hear, see, feel, look like, and be able to do differently or better by achieving the goal.
3. Change goal language to include words that resonate with you, making the goal more memorable.
4. Share your goal with people who are important to you, like your boss, spouse, friends or peers. Explain the commitments and changes you are making, and want to see, to increase your sense of accountability.

The coming series of blogs will further explore how to set goals your brain loves, setting you up for success in the year ahead!