drhelvig
I love a new year! It’s a time for reflection on the past year and to start thinking about how you want your next year to look. I’m a big believer in creating an intentional life rather than just hoping things are different if you want to have a better year than the last. Plus, a new year is a literal new beginning and a great chance to set yourself up for a successful year. My career and life coaching clients love doing this annual planning session to set themselves up for an amazing new year. I’ve never been a fan of resolutions because they often don’t work for many reasons. However, I’m a huge fan of setting goals, because research has shown over and over again that people make progress in the things that they track.
This is the first in a series of 4 posts on goal-setting and we’ll begin with how to set big overarching goals you have for 2023. The posts that follow will show you how to reverse engineer those goals into monthly, weekly, and daily tasks to set yourself up for success in those goals. Here are a few key tips to goal setting for 2023:
1. First, you want to choose overall goals in no more than 3-4 areas of your life. Why? Because you don’t want to overwhelm yourself and then become paralyzed into inaction. If you don’t know which steps to take first, it’s easy to take no steps at all. I recommend choosing just 1 or 2 career goals and 1 or 2 personal goals for the year. Set yourself up for success!
2. Make the goals things you have control over. This is a big one. For instance, you can’t say you will get a promotion (your boss has control over that) or that you will meet a significant other but you can focus on doing things to improve your career such as obtain a new skill, exceed your quotas, etc. or put yourself out there on the dating market and join a social group.
3. Be specific. Get as specific as possible with your overall goal. We’ll go more into this with the reverse engineering part of our goal setting in future posts. However, for this initial overall goal, it’s fine to put something like “improve my relationship with my spouse,” “eat healthier,” or “change jobs” because we will drill down into more specificity in future posts.
4. Use creative visualization. If you’re unsure where to begin as far as goal-setting, then try this creative visualization exercise. Imagine yourself at the end of 2023 and feeling like you just had the best year ever! Feel the glow of happiness and satisfaction until you’re actually smiling. Once you’re smiling because it feels real to you, you’re good to go.
Now think about these questions while you’re still experiencing that feeling of joy: what is different about my life in this visualization than how it is right now? What will make the biggest difference right now? That’s usually your biggest clue with where to start in terms of goal-setting. Or conversely, What area of your life is causing you the most frustration or discomfort? Think about that one area of your life getting better and that will help you determine your goal.
Ready to set some overall goals? You can use this free goal-planning sheet to start with crafting big-picture annual goals. Tip: old-fashioned hand-writing activates a different area of the brain than typing, so start out that way if possible. Want more help? Schedule a free coaching consultation here or email me at drkristi@mindfulcareercoaching.com.