6 Simple Tips for How to Achieve Your Goals

Happy New Year! We did it. We made it to another year.

Before I get into the 6 Tips for achieving your goals, I want to say one thing:

I know that for a lot of you 2021 was a year of hardship, heartache, loss, and struggle, and to you I want to send all my love, hugs, and prayers. This pandemic has been such a season of chaos and uncertainty, and with this new variant going around I can understand how it may feel like it will never end. But I want to encourage you to stay steadfast. You are so strong, resilient, and capable of so much greatness. Remember that you are not buried under your pain, sadness, loneliness, or anger- you’re planted. And anything that’s planted can grow. We may not be able to control this pandemic, and the state of the world is a mess, but we can control how we love one another. So let’s love each other well and do the hard work of heart work.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming-

Every new year I set out with the intention to “get it together,” and every year, at about 4 weeks in, I lose steam. Then I’m left in all my “un-togetherness” feeling completely discouraged and too far off track to begin again. I think I put too much pressure on myself and feel like if I’m not going extremely hard at my goals then I’m not doing it right. But 2021 was exactly the perspective that I needed. I learned that consistency is key, and it’s not motivation that leads to success, it’s discipline.

In 2022, I’m changing my approach to achieving my goals. I’ve learned so much in 2021 about productivity and now is my chance to put it all into practice. So if you are also struggling with sticking to your resolutions, here are Six Tips for Achieving Your Goals.

Set Realistic Goals

This may sound completely obvious, but I’ve realized that, in the past, I’ve set some pretty unrealistic goals, i.e. lose 20lbs, build an empire, find all the matches to my socks, and learn a foreign language all before the Netflix app asks “Are you still watching?” Now are all these goals attainable? Yes. The time frame? No. What I mean by set realistic goals is set goals that you actually want to achieve and give yourself a time frame that is appropriate to the specific goal. Losing 20lbs in 1 month is not gunna happen, but losing 20lbs in 5 months? Very doable.

While we’re on the topic of setting goals let me just say, make sure the goals you set for yourself are ones you actually want to achieve. Ask yourself, “Do I actually want to achieve this goal?” So many of us make goals we don’t actually want to make because we feel obligated or like we’re expected to make them. I was just talking to a friend the other day and she told me that every year she makes it a goal to “Get abs” but never does. She said she makes this goal because all of the Instagram ads and billboards and people around her are telling her that this is a goal everyone should have. But in reality? She doesn’t want abs. She just wants to be healthy and feel comfortable in her own skin. And yet she still feels badly about herself when she doesn’t achieve it. I can totally relate, and I think a lot of you can, too. Let’s be honest with ourselves about what we want in 2022 and not burden ourselves with setting unrealistic goals we don’t even care about. Why set ourselves up for failure?

Write Down Your Goals

I’m a 7 on the enneagram, and though the type 3’s are the notorious goal-setters, I am highly goal-oriented. I come up with a million things I want to achieve or do or see every hour of the day, but a majority of those things never happen. Wanna know why? Because I forget about them. This year, I’m writing down my goals and getting super specific about them.

For example, instead of writing “Take better care of my teeth” (yes, that is one of my goals, thank you very much), I would write exactly how I want to take better care of my teeth. I would write things like “Floss every night,” “Schedule a dental cleaning every six months,” and “Use a fluoride toothpaste.” It’s easy for me to list off vague goals but I get easily derailed if I am not very specific.

While writing down your goals, it helps to also write down the benefits of those goals or how you want to feel when you achieve them. In other words, write down your WHY. It sounds arbitrary, I know, but hear me out. When we connect a feeling to a goal it makes us want to achieve it all the more. I do this when I workout. I personally do not like to workout, but while I am working out I remind myself of my WHY. I remind myself that when I finish this workout I will feel strong and energized, and I’m doing this because it’s important for my health. I’m telling you, this is a game changer. Can’t tell you how often I’ve been mid-squat, looked at my watch and thought “11 seconds is good enough, right?” and then reminded myself of my why and was able to push through.

Visualize Your Goals

I never really understood the value in this until 2021. I always wrote it off as unnecessary to my success but I recently started practicing it and WHOA! Big fan. I heard this story about an average golfer who was captured during the Vietnam War and was imprisoned. He spent everyday by himself in a 4×5′ room with no outside contact. In order to keep from going insane, he would visualize himself playing golf on his favorite course. He would visualize himself and the environment around him right down to the clothes he was wearing to the sound of the birds singing. He visualized himself in such detail that when, after 7 years of captivity and in poor physical condition, he returned to playing golf and miraculously shaved 20 shots off his average.

This story is crazy to me. The mind really is that powerful. Now I’m not saying we can all visualize ourselves being millionaires and never needing to shave our legs again and then BAM– it comes true. I’m saying that if we visualize ourselves where we want to be and how we get there, then something chemical and science-y happens in our brain that sort of rewires our way of thinking and makes achieving our goals more possible. Napoleon Hill once famously said, “What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Battles in life are won and lost in the mind, often before the events actually occur. When we change how we view ourselves, our lives and our future, we change the results we get each day.

“What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

Napoleon Hill

I’m in the process of creating a vision board for 2022. This is something I have NEVER done, nor thought I would ever do. But I truly believe that by visualizing my goals and creating something tangible that I can see my goals displayed on will be another game changer for me. I plan to put a copy of it as the background on my phone and laptop so that it is something I see everyday. I’ve never done this so I will update you on how it affects my overall goal getting!

Find People with Similar Goals

It is a million times easier to get things done when surrounded by people who have similar goals. I am blessed to have a loving husband whom shares a lot of similar goals as I do. For example, We both have specific health goals so making grocery lists for healthier meals and scheduling in our workouts has a higher success rate. I also have friends whom also have similar goals that can help hold me accountable. Building a community of people with similar goals is huge in achieving your goals because everything is so much easier when we feel like we aren’t doing it alone. Perhaps you don’t know anyone who also wants to step up their oral hygiene in 2022, or who wants to start a blog, or run a marathon. That’s okay. I can almost guarantee that you can find a Facebook group or neighbors who do and would love to conquer their goals with someone like-minded. There is power in numbers. And on those days where you feel like you just don’t quite have the energy to do the work to achieve your goals, or you need help, having a friend in your corner to cheer you on is often the only push we need to keep going.

Work On Your Goals Everyday

Set aside time everyday to dedicate specifically to your goals. You can’t expect yourself to organize your entire house in one day. But taking 30 minutes everyday to spend on one corner of your home will eventually get you there and save you the stress of cramming it all in one day. Take it slow and give yourself grace when you don’t get things done exactly on schedule or you fail and need to start again. When we carve out time for our goals, even if it’s just 15 minutes a day, its impossible for them to never be accomplished. It’s also a huge part in creating new habits. They say it takes 21 days for something to become a habit. So I cannot expect that one day of working out will lead to me successfully working out everyday ’til kingdom come. I have to train myself to get in the habit of choosing my physical health everyday until eventually it’s not something I have to think about as hard. I have to be very intentional about my goals (especially at the beginning) to develop the discipline to achieve them. I think the same can be said for a lot of us. So rather than spending 6 hours in the gym or watching one LeCordon Bleu YouTube video and thinking we can immediately have a six-pack or cook a 5 course meal with ease, let’s spend a little of everyday learning and practicing what aligns us with our goals.

I love using a physical planner for scheduling in time to dedicate to my goals. My favorite Planner to use is by The Happy Planner. I love how customizable it is and have so much fun playing around with different stickers and layouts. You can find these planners at Michaels, Hobby Lobby, or Joann’s Fabric Store, or directly on their website . You can find my exact planner here. I prefer the vertical layout but they have so many options depending on what you like.

Start Over Everyday

Lastly, start over everyday. It takes the pressure off when we think everyday is the first day of getting after our goals. It also makes failing hurt a little less. Because let’s face it- we probably will fail several times before we get it together. But every day is an opportunity to begin again and that’s the beauty of it all. So if one day you wake up and get nothing done but you spent amazing quality time with your loved ones, or you took time to rest, know that you did something just as (if not more) important, and tomorrow is another opportunity to start again.

I hope this year is a special one for you. My wish for you is that you find something to be proud of yourself for every single day and that you embrace who you are to the fullest. I hope these tips are some that help you get to where you want to be this year. Let me know what your goals for 2022 are and any tips you have for getting it together.