New Year, New You 

How to set achievable goals for 2008

What goals have you set yourself for the New Year, and how determined are you to achieve them?

Statistically, 70% of people who set New Year resolutions will have abandoned them by the 3^rd week of January, and of the 30% that don’t 90% of them will have given-up by June!

I’m sure this has never happened to you - and what can you do now to ensure you arrive at the end of 2008 counting yourself in the top 5% of people that do in fact follow through and achieve what they set out to achieve at the beginning of the year?

Follow my 5 Top Tips to Setting Achievable Goals, and notice the difference when  you say to yourself:

• 3^rd week of January, ‘yes, I’m still doing my goals’.
• June, ‘still focused’.
• December 2008, ‘wow, I feel great now that I’ve delivered on what I promised myself, and in fact achieved even more than that’!

Believe me, this can be you’re story. Every year end I get emails from people I’ve worked with telling me how great they feel with all the success they’ve created in their lives, such as this one I received from Monica a couple of days before Christmas:

Whether you choose to coach with me, follow one of my e-programmes or books, or simply implement the following 5 Top Tips to Setting Achievable Goals I know you’ll also then have the opportunity to be one of the people who email me next year to tell me of the success you’ve created in your life simply by following through on your goals.

5 Top Tips to Setting Achievable Goals

Step One:

Write everything down! Become someone who plans, who puts their ideas down on paper, computer, iPhone, Blackberry. Begin with the title ‘Achievements of 2008’ – and rather than list down what you’d like to do, make this a list of what you’ve achieved during 2008. For example, if you’d like to learn Spanish write, ‘learned Spanish’ and follow it up with the action below in Step Two.

Step Two:

Make it emotional, an event you’ll want to remember for years to come. For example, ‘learned Spanish’, can become, ‘took weekly Spanish classes and enjoyed a holiday in Madrid, and it was fantastic to understand and be able to talk with people in Spanish whilst I was there’. To attract something into your life is far easier than attempting to build something that isn’t yet there. Watch ‘The Secret’ (www.thesecret.tv) to learn more about ‘the law of attraction’.

Step Three:

Diarise your steps. Last year I gave diaries to 10 subscribers of my eNewsletter ‘Your Best Life’ with only one proviso, that they use them, and have recently received emails from several…

Step Four:

Visualize; see what you want happening in your imagination everyday, and in fact several times throughout each day. It’s often said how we get what we focus on. By making sure that focus is on what you do want to happen, then your mind and body will be in sync to ensure you achieve it. Think of visualization as a ‘mental rehearsal’ – athletes have done it for decades, CEO's and entrepreneurs spend thousands being coached how to do it, and this year bank employees, school teachers and students have been just some of the groups of people I've been employed to take through the steps to this simple technique. Spend time visualizing living what you want to have IN ADVANCE, every day, several times a day.

Step Five:

Take action every day. The most important thing is to do something, anything - the worst thing you can do is nothing at all. Take big steps, small steps, or intermediary steps – but take steps, a baby never learned to walk by not walking. Walk. Plan, support yourself, get a coach, enlist the help of a colleague, family member, or a friend when needed, and take the steps you know you need to take. It’s like joining the dots on a paper; individually they may be isolated and mean nothing, yet join them together and you get a picture, a stronger meaning, an ear saying ‘tell me what you want and together we’ll make it happen’. 

PS: Above all, follow through on your plans for 2008. See yourself bigger, taller, more than you were in 2007 - and look forward to growing into the new you during 2008. Keep in touch and remember, I'm waiting to hear from you in December 2008!!

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