New Year New You New Start

Keeping Motivated after the first flush of the New Year is often a difficult one – and by this time normally many people are already getting disheartened, discouraged or have fallen off the wagon on their New Year Resolutions.

But – we are not on about New Year Resolutions – I do not work with people on resolutions but on Goals – setting them, keeping to them and making them a stepping stone in your life plan for success in what ever are that might be.  These are not sheer ideas or fantasy that you might have of `one day` achieving – these are goals and a series or set of goals that you are and you will over the course of this year achieve and once achieve set further ones to move towards your ultimate long term life goals for the future.

New Year New You New Start – so what are you going to do to keep motivated – what goals have you set already – as I stated in last blog – keep them SMART – keep it all simple – have big dreams for what you want – no problem there – dream as big as you want.

But what are your stepping stones to achieve that Dream – these are where, I believe, your goal setting comes in – and this is where it often goes wrong or pear shaped for people – they set goals that are unachievable, get disheartened, feeds into a negative mind set they already have of themselves and they fail – so give up and do nothing more about it – how many gyms are full of people sweating and groaning on the first week of January, sales of gym clothes, exercise dvds go up and you see people running and so forth every where – BUT by this date and mid January onwards = the memberships notice a decline in people attending, sales go down or return to normal and by end of January 80% of those signed up 1st January are no longer attending.  WHY ????? Because people throw themselves in, expecting MIRACLES to occur – weight to drop off them and because their is not INSTANT results – give up WHY? Because instead of doing it sensibly and steady and doing it at a pace that is achieveable LONG TERM  to change their lifestyles and their goal is too big too soon and ultimately set themselves up to fail.

AND HOW OFTEN HAVE WE ALL DONE THAT – hands up from me – But not any more – thats why Goal setting is important and HOW  you see what goal setting is about as well – thats the most important step – and thats what will keep you motivated even when you want to stop and give up.

But in this New Year New You New Start – what keeps you motivated – be realistic and be honest – if its money then make your goals money orientated ones – break them down, write them out and put them on your wall, on the fridge, on your bathroom mirror – prioritise what is the most important thing or goal you want to achieve and work on that one.

Again too often I hear and have worked with people who set goals or talk about goals that are huge in size – and then get very quickly overwhelmed – where to start, what to do first and then go – this is too much and stop . You might have heard the saying – you can only eat an elephant 1 bit at a time – what it means (rightly so ha hahaha ) is that any problem or issue that is that big,  needs to be broken down into smaller achievable chunks and devoured in that way instead – after all attempting to consume anything or achieve anything that big is definitely too much at any one sitting – but break it down and you will be surprised how much you can do paced correctly and done in priority order.

Thats the key – setting goals to keep you motivated – setting goals on a monthly basis – break your year down into goals for each month – decide what you want from 2014 and then month by month, week by week or even day by day how you can do it – now that way you can achieve it and you will even surprise yourself how QUICKLY you will achieve it as you will have the motivation to complete the whole year and complete and achieve your bigger year goal as well.  WIN WIN and we like win win scenarios.

Put this to any objective, goal, dream, ambition – the results are the same – BUT you have to want it to be able to achieve it as well – get yourself sorted as well – following on from last blog re being honest with yourself – if not honest then you are already on rocky ground for succeeding or achieving your goals short, medium or long term are irrelevant.

An example – if you say to me – I want to be wealthy – ok put a figure on it – you say £50,000 a year I want to earn – ok I say how do you think you are going to earn this – you reply do not know but thats what I want to earn.

Ok – so here is the honesty – I have no problem in saying to anyone if you want big wage package or business turn over in that bracket – what skills have you got to be able to do that – if you do not have those skills then go out and get them, go back to college, go back and learn them, work every hour you need to to be able to have those skills to either get a job that pays you that wage OR get a business that you make successful to give you that as a return for yourself each year – so have goals but also know how you are going to set about achieving those goals as well and set realistic timelines for them as well.

Another example – wanting to lose weight – to be healthy – so you want to lose 2 stone – having a goal that by end of February that you will lose 2 stone might be a bit unrealistic – tonnes reasons why not good for you or sustainable as a lifestyle change for good.  So set goals for each month target weight loss – so that within the year you will have lost the 2 stone, changed your eating and lifestyle and exercise habits so that you do not put the weight right back on again.  Makes sense – marathon instead of sprint.

  I have decided in this New Year New You New Start – to make some quite big life changes both personally and in business and they are scary – but as this motivational slide and quote states – one thing I do not want to have in my life is REGRET.

I do not want to live my life, with `but if` or ` I should have done that` or `well it was not the right time` etc and the list goes on – when is the right time? is there ever one? NO you have to want to do it and I want to do it and I am going to do it and I know I will.

 What have you got to lose ? and how much have you got to GAIN – thats the question that I often ask – stop focusing on what happened in the past, your present and your future is all that is important – the past can only give you ideas of what not to do again or what mistakes to not keep repeating.  Taking these steps to focusing on yourself, making changes daily and sustaining those changes are what will influence your future – how you act NOW at this present moment is all important and vital on how successful you want to be – in either personal or professional or business life – its your choice to make.

Be honest with yourself – if you want to be successful – you will because your want, desire and your need for it will over ride your excuses for not being successful – because YOU WANT it – you work with coaches and others because you need the skills of others to assist you getting there – but over all you have to WANT it.

My advice to anyone working with me when I am coaching them is often this in the very start – if you do not know how you`tick` how you operate, what motivates you, what drives you, and you are not ok with feedback on this all (not counselling or therapy ) but feedback on patterns of behaviour, patterns of thinking, patterns of negative ways of being – or working on those to correct them – then coaching with me is not for you – if you are not honestly ready to be honest with yourself to make changes in your life to become successful in what ever area you want, if you are not ready to make changes – then you are not ready for me, for success and ultimately achieving your ultimate goal.

What keeps me motivated? Knowing that I am making changes in my life that will ultimately make me, my family and my business more successful keeps me motivated.  Knowing that any sacrifices I make now are ones that will give me long term goals that my kids will benefit – but also keeping me motivated is how much I want and love to work with people and making enough money to give me more and more financial freedom to be able to do this.  That keeps me motivated.

Find out what motivates you – keep it always in mind when setting goals and make sure that you recognise that and then take action and Do it. No excuses No Regrets.

New year new you new start – get the foundations right and get into action.

Follow me on    https://www.facebook.com/sharonjardinecoachingandtrainingassociates

Stay motivated stay on track 🙂