Welcome to 2019. From the Wonderfoods team, we hope that you had a safe and happy festive season!
The start of a new year is often a time when people set new year’s resolutions or goals in which they want to achieve in the year to come. Maybe you want to focus on your health and wellness this year by giving some old, unhealthy habits the flick!?
It can be a little overwhelmed stepping into the new year, and sometimes we can feel like we don’t know where to begin when it comes to achieving these goals and ambitions. Setting goals is a great way to stay on track and follow your dreams!
Setting goals in important. Goal setting is not just about creating a plan for your life and holding yourself accountable, it is about giving us the inspiration necessary to aim for things we may not have thought were possible.
5 Reasons Why Goal Setting is Important
- Goals give you focus
- Goals allow you to measure progress
- Goals keep you locked in and undistracted
- Goals help you overcome procrastination
- Goals give you motivation
Setting goals helps us believe in ourselves and is also a way to fuel your ambitions!
Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievements of those goals, and you will see forward progress in what might previously have seemed impossible. This can also help raise your self-confidence, as you recognise your own ability and competence in achieving the goals you have set.
A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART acronym.
SMART typical stands for:
- S – Specific (or significant)
- M – Measurable (or meaningful, motivational)
- A – Achievable (or action-oriented)
- R – Relevant (or realistic)
- T – Time-based (or trackable)
For example, instead of having “to lose weight” as a goal, it is more powerful to use the SMART goal “to have lost 5kg by March 31st, 2019.”
Other Great Tips for Setting Your Goals
A few extra tips and guidelines to help you set effective, achievable goals:
- State each goal as a positive statement – Express your goals positively.
- Be precise – Set precise goals, put in dates, times and amounts so you can measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal!
- Set priorities – If you have several goals, give each one a priority. This will avoid you feeling overwhelmed and helps direct your attention to the most important goals.
- Write your goals down – This solidifies them and gives them more force.
- Keep operational goals small – Keep low-level goals small, incremental and achievable. This allows more opportunity for reward.
- Set performance goals, not out come goals – Aim to set goals that you have as much control over as possible. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.
- Set realistic goals – It is important that YOU set goals that YOU can achieve. Don’t let others set unrealistic goals for you.
Goals are the first steps to every journey. Make 2019 a positive one!
