3 mistakes even high-achievers make in goal achievement
When it comes to goal achievement, there are common mis-steps I’ve made and see others making. I’m highlighting them here so we can support each other in our collective pursuit of our personal and professional goal achievement.
Here are three common areas where even high-achieving professionals can become derailed:
1. Allowing urgent items to take priority over our schedule, nudging goal efforts aside.
You may be thinking - of course…it’s urgent.
Well, is it urgent for you or someone else? Many times what’s urgent for someone else lands on your plate with a deadline attached, creating a sense of urgency for you. Particularly if you’re in a line of work where this is the norm rather than the exception, this can be a challenging environment to pursue those important but not urgent activities, which is the category that many goal efforts fall into. But, note I said challenging, not impossible.
Unless you’re dealing with life/death/emergency situations, many times an hour or two won’t impact an outcome of a situation.
It’s about finding the times in your day or week where you can carve out space. An example of what that could look like is a morning or two a week where you don’t look at your email or accept client appointments before 10 or 11am. Allowing you a good couple of hours to work on your major pursuits. You can even set up an automated email response that says just that “….I’m not available by email until 10am Tuesday and Thursday mornings and I will be happy to return your note after that time.” (Be sure to schedule time at 10am to respond to emails.)
2. Not reviewing our goals and the big picture enough.
Read your goals regularly. Reading them reminds us of the details and nuances and keeps them top of mind. And, remind yourself of WHY you chose them. What will it do for your career, business or life when you achieve it? Take time regularly to imagine you accomplishing them. Think of yourself as already having achieved them. Feel what that’s like. Visualization is so important. This is why athletes visualize their game, their run, their routine regularly.
3. Becoming discouraged and letting them go when we go a day, week or month without effort.
Life happens. I’m making a leap here (I think quite safely) in assuming we’ve all had those moments where we were going to set up that meeting, read that book or go to the gym today and it just didn’t happen. Something derailed it.
That doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It doesn’t mean you’ll never hit your goal. It doesn’t mean anything. We humans can give much meaning to events that really don’t have any meaning.
I was busy today so I didn’t go to the gym. Full stop. Our minds tend to make us failures or say we’ll never get there.
Try the ‘begin again’ approach.
Example: Yesterday and today I didn’t make that phone call to set up that important business development meeting. (Our brains sometimes say: we’ll never get that contract anyway, I’m not very good at business development and this is yet another example….)
Try this: Yesterday and today I didn’t make that phone call to set up that important business development meeting. (Begin again: I’m making sure there’s space in my calendar tomorrow so I have the appropriate time to prepare what I want to say and make that phone call. I’m going to silence my notifications and close out my email so I’m not distracted during that time.) No judgement. No meaning making. Begin again. Set yourself up to be successful.
Establishing your personal and professional goals allows you to apply focus. I encourage you to merge your goal efforts into your routine so they become habits and natural steps through your week.
Commit and visualize.
And, if you falter, begin again.
NOW is YOUR time,
Ariana
Business Coach Canada, Business Coach in Canada