The New Year is fast approaching and pretty soon you will probably find yourself compelled to set some goals to achieve over the next twelve months.
As you consider all the possibilities the new year has to offer you feel hopeful and excited. With a boost of positivity you think. ‘Yes, I can get that new job, lose that weight, go on that holiday, etc’ However, following these lovely thoughts how much time do you dedicate to planning out those goals and determining just HOW you will achieve them? Probably not enough BUT do not fear, I have you covered with my 7 steps to success in creating your goals and (most importantly!) reaching them. So, get yourself a pen and paper and let’s get started.
Step 1 – What do you want?
Describe in a few sentences what your goal looks like. For example, if you want to eat better, you may write something like ‘I want to eat healthy, delicious and nutritious food, by making conscious choices to prioritise my meal times, portion sizes and by reducing my sugar and processed food intake.’ Or you may wish to start exercising daily or meditating. Whatever it might be, expand upon the nature of the result you want, don’t merely state that you would like to lose weight. Instead write how you would like to feel when you lose weight, how much you’d like to lose and how this will make you feel when you achieve your goal. As an example your sentence might be ‘I want to feel lean and slimmer by losing 5kgs through improving my exercise regime and making healthier more conscious food choices, so I feel confident and happy in my clothes.’ Rather than ‘I want to lose 5kg by March.’ The difference being that the first example implies the change is permanent because you would always want to feel happy and confident in your clothes, whereas the second example seems as though you’re determined to make an impermanent change for an occasion in March.
Get specific with what your goal is and why and expand on its importance in your life. This way it has a greater importance in your life and is worthy of you spending your time and making the necessary changes in order to meet this challenge.
Step 2 – What help are you going to need?
List the resources you need to call on for help in order to achieve this goal. Following the healthy eating example you may choose to put reminder notes on the fridge, or cupboard, you may ask someone to give you words of encouragement. You may buy a cookery book, allow more time in your day to make meals and even tell your friends and family so that they can support you.
By checking at this stage what you could do to have support set up prior to starting on the journey of obtaining your goal, you are more prepared and building a level of commitment to achieving your desired outcome. Plus you are really exploring what this goal means to you and how prepared you are to communicate your intentions to others.
In my experience, having a supportive partner, friend or family member who appreciates your dedication to achieving your goal can make a real difference and becomes a beacon during the transition when you might otherwise feel alone.
Step 3 – What is your leverage?
This is the root of your goal, the big question ‘Why do I even want this?’ At this point you may struggle to find an answer as it’s not always an easy or logical answer that arises and it can feel uncomfortable. If you find that is the case, then ask yourself if your goal needs reframing or indeed changing all together.
Following the example of the healthy eating goal, if your leverage here was that in fact you wanted to look like a super model in a magazine article that you read, then firstly you need to determine whether it is realistic leverage, whether it’s a goal that you can and indeed should achieve. If it isn’t but you still want to pursue the healthy eating goal, find a sentence or image that you can hold on to that really embodies what you’re trying to achieve; be it exuding more energy, vitality or actually enjoying meals.
The point of understanding your leverage is so that you have an anchor to keep you on the path of achieving your goal. If you have something more meaningful to hold on to and visualise, like becoming healthier and fitter and able to go running or feel more confident in your skin then that is what will drive you forward. At this point it all sounds so easy to accomplish, but know now that you will wane in your enthusiasm while you are building your new habits. There will be days when you revert, or choose to take the easy root and ignore your plan to achieve your goal. It is at these times that leverage is so important. And in order to prepare, during the tough and low periods, that’s when you go back to your leverage. Leverage is key!
Step 4 – How are you going to specifically integrate this goal into your life?
There are lots of ways you can bring your attention to your goal throughout your day, through visual reminders, routine changes and through your language. It is important now to devise how you’re going to integrate changes into your life to support and drive you towards your achievement. It’s also helpful to experiment with different ways to reinforce your changes. Mix it up. Try out affirmations, routine changes using alarm reminders, vision boards, book into courses, find support groups – don’t hold back, list them all and see what resonates with you the most. Different approaches may work at different times. So, how are you going to change your current habits and lifestyle to incorporate the realistic methods for you to achieve your goal?
You might have noticed by now that I’ve not spent any time on timeframes or deadlines, and I’m not going to either, but I will explain why. From my experience goals are set, worked towards and achieved. If a date is set, it gives a deadline for the pressure to be on for, which works for some people and not others. However I am a firm believer that once a goal is achieved you don’t drop the new habits that you’ve built, you maintain them, sustain them and even adapt them to stretch for your next goal. Once you’ve achieved your goal it becomes your new baseline and you look for the next stretch, so you always progress forwards. There doesn’t need to be a timeframe as such, but more focus given to why you’re doing it so that the habits you cultivate remain and urge you forward.
Step 5 – Create your words and explore your feelings.
I believe that the language we use, our self talk, is highly crucial to our mindset, focus and belief in our ability to achieve our goals. Check out myPositive Self Talk and Languageblog post.
Identify your fixed mindset voice. The inner critic and what it is likely to tell you, to throw you off course and send you on a negative detour. Let me reassure you that we all have this voice, however we need to plan out our responses, psych ourselves up to be able to notice the critic and shrug it off by consciously replacing the negative phrases with positive ones.
You need to create some uplifting sentences and phrases that will support your journey towards your goal and quieten your fixed mindset voice. Personally, I love to use a three sentence mantra, it is my signature go to application ‘I can…. I will….. I am…‘ It’s so simple but powerful and shows that you are on a progressive journey and moving through the stages of achieving it, until you are it!
Now imagining that you have achieved your goal, what emotions do you feel, how does that sense of achievement become embodied for you? Identify your feelings of ultimate success and repeat your positive sentences. This enables the mind, body and word connection so that you are aware of how it feels for you when you achieve, how your mind and body are stimulated and saying the words in this state helps create a link for the brain to associate the phrases with the feeling of success and achievement reinforcing the connection between the two and boosting their effect.
Step 6 – How Committed are you?
I’m hoping that as you’ve gotten this far, the answer to this question will be somewhat telling.
On a scale of one to ten, one being not committed and ten being so excited to get started that you know you simply cannot fail! At this point how committed are you to achieving your goal? Be honest, as this is the point you need to be serious about the likelihood of you really achieving your goal, understanding the leverage and following through. This is the critical point where you can re-visit any part of this process and strip it all back and re-calibrate.
So what is your number and are you happy with where it is?
Step 7 – What do you need to up your level of commitment?
If you have found you are at a seven, eight or nine out of ten. The question here is simple… what do you need to up your number, what do you personally require to get more committed to achieving your goal?
This line of questioning gets you thinking more about the process you’ve just been through in planning out your goals and asks you a final time what might be a missing step to give you that extra nudge and support when you need it. Ponder on this question and see what springs to mind. You might be surprised, or it may reinforce that you are happy with where you’re at and with the goal you’ve set. Either way this reinforces your commitment to your goal and up-levels your plan in securing a successful outcome.
So there you have it, my 7 steps to creating a goal and getting you to stick to it!
Check out the image to the left if you need a reminder of the 7 steps and want to work within a worksheet – enjoy!
Good luck, although with this process I know you don’t need it!
Alison x
P.S – I would love to get your feedback, how did this process work for you, what came up for you? And finally, did you achieve your goal? Get in touch and let me know!
As a Coach I find it very telling the language that my clients use to define their agendas, or to tell me about their week, update me on their progress and even how they describe situations. As an observer I can clearly see the expressions on their face as they talk and how their body shifts and moves and how their mannerisms display their emotions towards the topic. It’s like a dance, a synergy between the words they utilise and the reaction it causes them to feel within their body as an outward expression, displaying their feelings more clearly as a result. These dances happen spontaneously, without warning and the movements can be subtle, guarded, wholly expressive and flamboyant or smooth and exacting. Either way, there is a correlation between the language that we use and it’s effect on the external body to an observer.
Now you might be thinking well of course, as I talk I move, I am an expressive being and it’s natural for my muscles and limbs to jerk and twitch and respond to my thought processes as I am speaking, it’s all a part of communication. And I would agree with you. However, let’s go deeper. Consider this, if your body expresses a reaction outwardly in the moment to match your words, your thoughts even before they become your words, and it’s clear to see how that manifests externally, then what is happening internally?
We have a lot more unsaid thoughts going around in our mind daily than we need or have time or energy to express, and most of those thoughts are directed at ourselves, we internalise and it becomes our self-talk. This self talk happens a lot quicker than our ability to verbalise, as we have the thought prior to engaging speech. Therefore it’s crucial to analyse the language we use externally in order to follow the path back to the initial thought and the self talk.
As a Coach, specialising in navigating and guiding my clients with a positive approach and framework, my questioning is predominantly focused on how to express the positive nature of the moment, situation or goal. Self talk and the use of language is by far one of the most useful breakthrough tools for my clients.
Bringing awareness to their external language and internal self talk, instantly enables them to define negative and positive mindsets in relation to opinions, beliefs and ultimately how they see and interact with the world around them. So by re-framing some of their habitual sayings, sentences and self talk they start to make way for engaging with the world in a whole new way and seeing things from a different perspective. As their positive language takes hold and replaces that which no longer serves them, their corresponding expressions within their body externally is evident and complimentary. As an observer I notice that their posture may improve, their shoulders relax and tension releases, their chest opens up, they no longer cross their arms or legs and they lean into the conversation. Internally they also notice that by focusing on positive language and self talk their internal rhythms, thoughts and attitudes also make the shift and the emotions of happiness and joy are more often experienced within their day.
So, how can you take this forward? Start by analysing your language and how it makes your body respond and what emotions it conjures up. Then re-frame the sentence into one that can be expressed positively. For example, if you are focusing on what you are resisting and saying the word ‘No’ to, stop. Turn it around, because by saying ‘No’ to something you are indeed embracing something else, what is it that you are in fact saying ‘Yes’ to? Put your focus on what you want as opposed to what you do not want. Now how does your language alter, how does your body represent that shift and what are your feelings surrounding it?
Consider this, if someone where to ask you not to do something, how does it make you feel? May be annoyed, as though you were being told off unnecessarily or indignant. Now if the same someone where to ask you to do what they wanted or needed instead of focusing on what they didn’t, maybe those initial feelings of annoyance wouldn’t be triggered because whether you could comply with the request or not the conversation didn’t start with a negative.
Other ways to build up your positive self talk and language are to have reminders and phrases that you read, write and say to yourself and others. You can create a whole toolbox of sentences and meaningful words to support a more positive and healthier mindset that is personalised to you. Recall some amazing moments in your life and describe them, notice the words you use and the sentences you create. Then take those positive and uplifting words which have meaning and are already linked to positive feelings you have experienced, and create your phrases from there so that they are authentic.
Lastly, enjoy the dance after all it is completely yours and should be noticed, savored and memorable! And maybe even admired by others enough to inspire!
I had an enlightening conversation the other week with an acquaintance and it opened my eyes to a habit I had formed regarding my words, and the impact it would have been having. Yet I had been completely and totally oblivious to it. Sharing the story here with you now seems quite surreal still, especially given how much weight I believe our words hold, in relation to forming our realities. Yet here I was making a complete blunder!
It was a regular week day and I was following up on a task I had to complete so I made a telephone call. When the call was answered I immediately delved into my regular conversation starter of ‘Hello it’s Alison, how are you?‘ Fairly simple enough, I am sure you’d agree, however the response I received really knocked the wind out of my sails. On the other end of the phone was a kind, soft and calm voice which said ‘Hi Alison. Well, if you’re really asking…’ and then she proceeded to tell me that in fact she wasn’t feeling too great of late as she was going through some health tests.
Now, it wasn’t the information she gave me surrounding her health that caught me off guard, although of course I was duly concerned. It was in fact that she responded so authentically by asking if I was in fact genuinely asking how she was and whether I truly wanted to hear her response before she divulged it. Wow! Never before had I considered that I had set phrases of words that came easily to me when starting conversations. Nor had it occurred to me that in fact I might have come across as not being invested in an honest dialogue. I would like to think that every time I ask someone how they are I am present and ready to genuinely hold that space for them to answer truthfully, whatever the response might be. And yet, in actual fact I had to do a bit more soul searching on this one as I discovered that I hadn’t gotten there yet, you know, to that part that really wasn’t sitting quite right with me. And so I dug a bit deeper. When people asked me how I was, what did I respond? Did I even know? Finally, there it was, my Eureka moment I had hit the jackpot and my thoughts were clear.
I had a set response when people asked how I was, I always answered with ‘I’m good, thanks, yeah not bad…’ It wasn’t an authentic, genuine response I was giving to others. Nor was their question one I ever gave time to consider, I had dismissed it as a polite conversation starter. Yet I know the power of words and their ability to change and influence how we feel (check out my Positive self talk and language blog). I was stuck in a pattern repeat of dismissing the idea of checking in to see how I was, I was also not responding truthfully by being vague and bland, not wanting to be too positive or negative in that moment therefore drawing a fine line of ‘okness‘. I was doing this repeatedly as I didn’t want to stand out or detract from what the other person might have wanted to tell me. This was crucially important, and more than that I was being prompted multiple times a day to check in with myself to see how I was in fact feeling, and to assess and make the necessary adjustments I needed in that moment, just by checking in with myself and answering honestly. My takeaway here was that for as long as I could remember I had been telling myself and anyone that was asking, that I was ‘good and not too bad‘ – yuck! What a way to build myself up and create joyous feelings, I say this with a touch of sarcasm, clearly.
When working with my clients I always encourage conscious thought and awareness and ensure the language that we use is positive, striving for greatness, no mediocre in sight. Yet this simple pattern of language I had formed for myself was in direct conflict with my practices. So let’s Coach myself round and out of this drab response cycle.
‘When someone asks me how I am, what would I want to say to them, to invoke what I want to be feeling?’ This seems like a fair question, I’ve already explored why I keep in line with the ‘okness’. But what I truly want to be feeling is happy and healthy, alert, vibrant and motivated, optimistic and light. Gosh writing this now does invoke these feeling.
‘So how could I change my response cycle to incorporate these words?’ I have to say that it will take conscious effort, as we all know. I will need to practice a new response multiple times in order to form a new habit. Although my awareness of this will now hopefully be enough to trigger a Pause before I answer so that I can actually check in with myself and respond authentically. I will also endeavor to ask myself during the day how I am so that I can practice checking in with myself and making that connection. Ummm what was the question again, ah yes, back to incorporating these words. So I can make sure I tell myself daily that I am happy and healthy, vibrant and alert, motivated and feeling optimistic and light! I could even go so far as to put reminders up on post-its around the house to prompt my awareness. And there are also beautifully inspirational home decor products and canvases that can be created in line with these positive words and phrases to keep you on track, check out a favorite of mine Say it Sista for some uplifting inspiration!
Great so now I have some actionable tasks to incorporate within my day, and I can start today. But how will I keep myself accountable I hear you ask. Well I will encourage you to ask me how I am, and wait for my response, and let’s see how I do shall we?
And finally a coaching challenge, something for you to get your teeth into. I challenge you to a self inquiry, take some time to think about the language you use when responding to the question of how you are. Does it support positive behaviors, feelings and responses, or do you need to revise the words that you use? And following the questions above what can you do to implement a healthier framework for checking in with yourself daily upon seeking to discover how indeed you are? I would love to hear your thoughts on this and your actions as a result.
Thank you for reading, and I leave you with the question ‘how are you?‘
How to introduce myself and tell you a bit about how 3C Coaching came to be? Well bear with me as it could be a bit haphazard as I contend with the excitement of writing my first blog, let alone figuring out where indeed to start!
I guess I could start at the beginning, back in the UK where I was first introduced to coaching. But to be honest it would make for a long drawn out and unnecessary tale to begin my blog. Maybe I will hold that story for another day. So let’s skip straight to the reason, my why for writing this, my business purpose and how I got here today – Motherhood, so here goes……
I have always wanted to step out of my comfort zone and help, genuinely help people find their ‘why’. So I had to start living and breathing mine.
I became a mum and suddenly my whole world shifted, I expected more of myself and I realised I had no time to waste. I mean, I’d blinked and all of a sudden found I had grown up. I was living in NZ, had a great job, partner, home, dog, cat and wonderful friends and I was a grown up responsible for a baby, my baby! There were also a few other telling facts that I was no longer a care free 20-something, like grey hairs, wrinkles and a mortgage, however I was able to overlook those. But motherhood and getting married, well they were my clinchers. My triggers to stop dreaming of someday and make headway on my goals. So motherhood was my awakening of sorts. I love being a wife and mother but in order to retain some of me and who I always wanted to be I was driven to take action. Other than our cat, Grace, I am the only female in our household and it is really important to me to be an inspiration to my boys, not to mention showing them that I am practising what I preach, because I know they will challenge me as soon as they can. So I need my coaching and mindfulness tools now more than ever, to be my best self as my mental and physical resilience are being tested. But motherhood inspired meto get brave and follow my dream – I have always wanted to step out of my comfort zone and help, genuinely help people find their why, what and how. So I had to start living and breathing mine.
So back to the coaching. I had just given birth to our second son and it was time. Our family was complete and I wanted my last year of parental leave to be memorable for something towards my future, my family’s future. I’d always wanted to get my coaching accreditation and being a stay at home mum for a year seemed like the ideal time. And then, I catapulted my thinking forward 2 years, to when both kids were school ready and I’d have a thriving practise doing what I love and able to balance it around my family’s needs. My parallel dream of being a present mum, always doing the transportation runs, taking my boys to their classes and clubs, play dates etc. I figured that setting up the business would only take a few years of no sleep and being a mum to a newborn, when I made the decisions I was already well sleep deprived, so why not? And it has been the best career decision I could have made.
My love of coaching stemmed from everything I knew to be true about the topic, how people had everything they needed to make the right decisions for themselves. Their uniqueness makes our society and it needs embracing. So to be the person to empower others to take the necessary actions and make the changes they need to – that’s everything to me! And to be able to incorporate mindfulness and wellness as an additional tool, in this busy technology driven 24/7 world we now live in, seems to be a necessity for a happier, healthier and more present life. These are the skills I have embraced to enrich my life, and the skills I hope my boys will observe through me.
Fast forward to April 2016 and 3C Coaching was born, out of a long awaited dream, during the midst of a sleep deprived era of a new mum of two with the intention of making someday, one day. Being an inspiration for my boys, being able to help people gain their sense of clarity and get conscious, about themselves and where they are and where they want to be, and then taking those first steps to committing to creating it. Even through challenges and doubts, and I’ve been there. I know I will never stop growing. learning and developing and nor do I want to, life’s about learning and experiencing and I want to do as much of it as possible with my loved ones. So 3C stands for Clarity through Conscious Creation as the process for getting through life, making sure it is one that you control, love and deserve, not something that’s happening to you and around you. And on the flip side to me 3C is a reminder of my why it stands for my three Callan’s, my husband and my two boys. I am beyond lucky.
So 3C Coaching is my vehicle for empowering others, guiding them to help themselves in identifying and achieving their goals. Be it an amazing career or business, an outstanding lifestyle or incredible wellness and a higher state of consciousness or living mindfully with resilience and happiness. Whatever your heart desires can be created. But putting your finger on what your true happiness is, requires some initial soul searching. That’s what I love, helping people get to their eureka moment, and supporting them to believe they can make it happen.
There are a few people that I’d like to thank for helping me realise my dream. My husband and boys for standing by me and letting me find my way. My parents for their encouragement and enthusiasm, my personal cheer squad! My friends Vicky and Kathryn for listening and re-organising my mind through the clutter of creativity and my impatience. Amadee, Lance & Jo for all the business savvy advice. My teacher, peers and fellow students through the Mindfulness Coaching School, it’s been epic! Jess for clearly telling me in the very beginning that starting up this business was a good thing, ‘and it wasn’t like I was planning on murdering anyone!‘ Lee, my IT guy, for being so willing to change everything on a whim! All my fantastic friends for your encouragement and support. And last but not least by any means my wonderful willing clients, the reason I do what I do.
