Striving towards your goals.

How do you keep making progress and moving towards your goals? Be they financial, personal or community.

Monday morning rolls around again. What are you going to do this week to get yourself out of your comfort zone?

We operate a lot of time from our comfort zone, yet we all know ‘the magic happens when we leave our comfort zone’. So how do we ensure we stay in the magic zone this week? Unless we make a conscious decision to try something new or do something different, it won’t happen. Change being forced or pushed upon us is definitely not what I’m referring to.

Did you set goals for 2018? If so, have you reviewed them lately? Is there anything on the list you know you would like to achieve by the end of this calendar year that you haven’t got around to starting yet?

If so, let’s get on track. We’re over half way through the year.  I hosted a series of ‘goal focused’ workshops between January and April this year. While I review my goals and targets regularly, I know this habit hasn’t been formed by as many people as would like to benefit from it.

PICK A GOAL

Be it small, medium or large. Pick one goal that you would like to start working on (to overcome a fear, or to move towards something more positive). In many cases people find ‘identifying the goal’ to be a stumbling block. If something doesn’t come to you, start small.

If the goal is larger, you need to break it into manageable chunks you can start working on.

Pick one thing that’s going to move you towards achieving something you haven’t before. You’ll look back on New Years Eve and feel really proud you started making changes.

While my focus with clients is on financial freedom goals, getting started with any goal is good.

BREAK IT DOWN

Always break down anything that will take time into daily or weekly action points. For me, I will list something small each day that will move me in the direction of the goal. The point is the ‘action’. Action we take each day adds up (really quickly). With that momentum, you tend to achieve more than you thought possible, especially if you find little things you can do every single day, to get you to your goal.

CELEBRATE THE SMALL WINS

By breaking your goal into smaller parts and ticking these off daily and reviewing weekly and noticing how far you have come (so quickly), your brain gets a constant hit of dopamine. This then pushes you forward for the next week and the week after that. The key is the consistent steps, taken daily. This method, as you can imagine, helps you form new behaviours easily.

What are you doing today? Perhaps during the day something will occur to you that you see someone else do or you’ll notice something and think, yes, I’d like to be able to do that. Watch out for this and start thinking about your comfort zone. Do you really want to stay there to the end of this year and further? I’m guessing not.

Pick your goal for the short term.

Get your action sheet together and review it regularly. Ensure it’s practical and prioritise yourself and your own goal this week.

IF YOUR GOAL IS FINANCIAL FREEDOM

If your goal is ‘financial freedom’ like many people, then you could start by summarising where you are now and where you would like to be, in say five or ten years time (or less perhaps). The only way to get there is to draw your own road map. No-one else does this for us.

Decide what financial freedom looks like to you. Most people I talk to have differing ideas but many would like to feel they have ‘enough’ put by (and perhaps enough protection in place), that they could decide to leave their current position and do less or very little or they would like to enjoy ‘a freedom’ their current position doesn’t offer (perhaps less work days per week or a different type of work).

Don’t get bogged down deciding what everything would look like. Our brains don’t like uncertainty. To start ask yourself a few questions. Decide how much you need to live on. Make a list of your commitments. What would your ideal ‘job’ look like if you were doing less? Would it involve being able to work from other locations to provide you with a lifestyle you would prefer?

Without a road map or a starting point, achieving your financial goals won’t happen (or perhaps they will but it may take a longer time). Create the future you want and actively enjoy travelling the road you are taking.

Best of luck. Here’s hoping we’ll all be celebrating the small wins this Friday 🙂

Wendy Merrigan is a Chartered Accountant with a practice in Dublin 2. For more information or to chat to Wendy about your financial freedom goals, email wendy@williamsmerrigan.ie