Storm Your Goals with GoalStormer There are five key things that research suggests separate those with dreams from those with achievements: Start with Why - Only Do What Matters Frame Goals Positively - Don't Sabotage Your Mindset Focus On The Now - Frequency Beats Enormity Keep The Energy - Kill Procrastination Prepare Positively for Failure - Because Life Happens Start with Why - Only Do What Matters Meaningful goals can be tough to achieve, almost by definition. That's why you need to take a bit of time to think about what really matters to you when you set a goal. There needs to be a "why?" behind the scenes - something that goes deeper than the "what" you have or get at the end of the goal. How will achieving your goal make you feel? How will you be a different person as a result? Think of it this way: the "why" is about the journey you'll go on, not the destination you'll reach. This is because the "why" is the driver that will inspire you to do great things, take big steps, confront your fears, get back up when life gets you down, ask for support when the time comes and ultimately achieve what matters to you. If the goal matters not just to you, but to others also, then that is a huge additional driver for you to use to energise and motivate you. Why? Lose weight not just for you, but for your family. Raise 5000 not just to hit a target, but to make a defined difference to specific individuals' lives. Be happier for yourself and your friends. Be a better leader for you and your workmates. Why? You don't want to let them down; and they want to support you in succeeding. When you create a new goal in GoalStormer, we ask you two very important questions - why you care, and what reward you'll get.
Take time to answer "why I care" - think about the journey you'll take. Revisit your answer. Sleep on it. Edit it. Ask yourself if it truly inspires you. What would your friends or family say if you told them that this was what was driving you? Think also about the "reward" question - this is more about the destination - where you will be, what you will have, how you will feel or who you will be at the end of the journey. It could be " 100,000" or "Be happy". It's how you know the journey has ended. This stage of the journey anyway Give yourself time and space to think about and enter "why I care", because the answer to this question is the single most important piece of information you'll put in your goal. Think about how you'll know that your journey has ended. How does that turn into your reward for achieving your goal? Keep revisiting your "why I care" and "reward" answers - for inspiration, motivation, and to make sure they are still "you". Frame Goals Positively - Don't Sabotage Your Mind-set "Positive" works so much better for our brains than stop, inhibit, negative, blocker type perceptions. "Positive" triggers our motivation-reward behaviours rather than our avoidance behaviours. Many goals are "stop" type goals - lose weight, stop smoking, stop beating myself up. These feel like they are emphasising our current or previous failures every time we look at them or even contemplate them. Failing to achieve them feels like a fate accompli - we're doomed from the start. Whatever your goal, try to frame it in positive terms. Try to paint a picture of the positive result. This is basic, but powerful psychology, similar to NLP (neuro-linguistic programming). If you struggle to do this, try thinking of how life is now, and how life will be when you achieve your goal. Look at the changes, and for each one, describe it by what's better. Don't "lose weight", instead, "get fitter" or "fit into a smaller size of clothes" or "be happy looking in the mirror". Don't "stop smoking", but "leave it longer and longer between cigarettes" or "get cardiovascularly fit". Don't "stop beating myself up", rather "give myself credit where it's due" or "celebrate my successes unashamedly".
Include in goals and steps active, positive verbs and adverbs (doing words and words describing doing) - like "run confidently", "dance with grace", "cook expertly" - because even tiny wee short phrases like this paint positive pictures. If you have existing goals or steps in GoalStormer, review them now. Can you make them more emphatically positive? Will you smile when you see them pop up in the daily email as forthcoming actions? For new goals and steps, aim to use positive language, and try to get a sense of how you'll go about actions, rather than just having a task list of to-dos. These are your goals, this is your life - why not have fun or satisfaction along the way! Focus On The Now - Frequency Beats Enormity Setting big goals inspires us, but don't get fixated on the end-point. Our brains are very good at letting us visualise success and daydream instead of actually doing the hard yards. Then, all of a sudden, we're weeks or months down the line, with nothing tangible done towards our dreams, ambitions and goals. If we then try to rescue things with a massive, heroic action, this can often fail, or at the least leave us tired and down. Another side to this coin is that our brains also like to pretend we are busy with vital stuff, when actually we're just filling time or avoiding things we know we really should be doing. (For example, here, housework suddenly becomes important when there's a tax return due ) You don't need to change everything at once. Small actions, small changes, made every day move us ever closer to our goals and keep the momentum up on our journey. Far better for our motivation (and sanity) if we have many small successes than one monumental failure. This takes practice. You may need to get into the little and often habit, and build your discipline for doing something every day or week. That's actually one of the key things GoalStormer is designed to help with. If you want to get into the little and often habit, make sure that GoalStormer report emails are set to "Daily" - this is the default setting, so unless you've changed it in the Tools tab, you're good to go here. Consider also setting the time for your email reports in the My Emails section of the Tools tab - I have mine set for first thing in the morning so my steps for today are waiting for me; but you might prefer an early evening email if you work on your goals in the evening.
When you are setting up a goal, make sure you break it into steps which you enter within the goal. Especially for early steps, err on the side of breaking them down and down into smaller activities, so you have a small, achievable thing to do every day, as listed in your daily GoalStormer email. Is your goal something you're happy to share? You can tick the Public checkbox in your goal settings to let others see your goal and progress - encourage the people that support you to occasionally check on your progress so you know you need to get into the little-and-often habit - or "there will be banter!" Keep The Energy - Kill Procrastination "Tomorrow is a lazy person's busiest day." I used to procrastinate, but now I just don't get round to it. Anyway, enough of that. New Year's resolutions are a great example of how we come up with goals in a fizz of energy, and then as the months go on, we find reasons not to do more and more of the things we need to do. Working on big goals often feels like an odd blend of motivation and procrastination - we power through the things that inspire us and give immediate gratification, and avoid the things that worry us or bore us, or don't deliver results quickly enough. We end up with lopsided results and an even bigger list of things we'll never get round to. Energy, action and confidence beat procrastination, fear, boredom and impatience. One trick is to start or do something - anything - because this gets some momentum building and creates new energy. Look for a step you can do right now. Do it. Mark it "Done" in your goal. Watch your GoalStormer momentum tick up in the Momentum chart. Can you do another step? Is there a nemesis task that you can't face, or fear? Put time in your diary to do it. Ask a friend to help you through it. Break it down into tiny, weeny-wee steps. Writing down new steps to take to get stuff done is optimistic and motivating. Perhaps pause working on this goal and set up a new one specifically to get through the nemesis task; turn this painful task into a journey with its own outcome and reward. Keep an eye on your momentum (the chart at the top of the GoalStormer screen) - how are you building and losing it? Do you chip away little and often or focus on big peaks to get you over deep troughs? Would it help to try the other approach (neither is necessarily wrong, just different)?
Keep GoalStormer logged in during the day and use dead time to chip away at goals and steps - even if you feel really busy ask yourself "what little thing could I do in the next 2 or 3 minutes that would contribute to a step or goal?" - then do it! Working on or completing any step, or sending a message of support builds some momentum Don't worry about defining every step you think you need to take at the start of a goal. A goal is a living thing in GoalStormer - you can add, edit and remove steps as you see fit. You can feel a hit of optimism, enthusiasm and energy when you think up and enter a new step, so keep re-inventing the detail of your journey forward through your goal - there might be something new you can do right now! Prepare Positively for Failure - Because Life Happens Hmm. Just a couple of emails ago, I was talking about framing things positively, and here I am talking about failure Don't worry. This is about being prepared to deal with what life throws at us. We can't possibly predict what life events will happen in future (well, other than death and taxes) and how they might affect our priorities. We can be fairly confident though that we'll face small setbacks on our journey - things like having a doughnut just when we had lost our first 5kg. We deserve a reward! Then regret it. Then give up on dieting. The psychological problem is that failing with one goal then makes us more likely to consider we've failed at subsequent goals. The brain moans at us that "all is lost" and this small failure is the worst thing ever. Period. Bah! What's the point in working on this goal anyway? What we need to do is put ourselves in a position where one setback doesn't mean then end of the goal. That means seeing a failed step as just that - not the failure of the entire goal. We learn, we re-plan and we keep going on our journey. Part of why GoalStormer is designed to break goals into steps is precisely because of that need to re-plan the detail and crack on, rather than abandon the goal at the first setback. Does the step still matter? Yes; OK, set a new date, or just accept that it's overdue, but you'll do it and learn how long it will take in future. No, doesn't matter now; OK, delete it or mark it as done anyway and chalk it up to experience.
Look at your goals. Are they broken down into steps? If not, take some time to enter steps into your goals, so that you can be clearer that progress is being made, and one failure doesn't void your ambition. Review your steps, and perhaps think about which ones worry you most. What will you do if you feel you've failed to complete a step? What's your "plan B"? Delete it, move the deadline, break it into smaller steps, or change it entirely? This review is useful because it gives you a mental "emergency alternative" - you might even want to put a note of your ideas in the Details field for the step - that way it's ready if you ever need it. Shall we finish on a positive note? Yes, of course! Over the past few sections, we've shared some key actions to make sure you go on an amazing journey and achieve what matters to you: Start with why, think positive, make progress every day, keep building momentum, laugh at setbacks - and unleash your awesome!