Write it down!

It’s the start of 2021! You made it! Congratulations!

Did you make a resolution?

If you did, did you abandon it already? 25% of people will abandon their resolution within 7 days. 7 days!

I don’t believe in new years resolutions. As much as I love the newness of a new year. The feeling of a fresh start. I also very strongly believe that if you want to improve yourself, you can choose to do it at any time. You do not need to wait for the start of a year or the start of a quarter or even the start of a week. Just do it. Today.

This blog is not about resolutions. Nope. I want to talk about goal setting. If you are an entrepreneur, I hope you have set goals for the year. If you attended our planning workshop you may even have those goals broken down into a smaller goal that you will work on over the next 90 days. However, if you didn’t attend our planning workshop, I need to ask… do you have goals for 2021?

You do?! Awesome! Next question… did you write them down?

You are 42% more likely to achieve your goals if they are written down. Did you know that? That’s huge! 42%! If you wrote them down, you must be feeling really good right now. If you didn’t you might think this stat is hogwash. Either way… you might also be wondering why writing down your goals is so powerful. let me tell you!

• Writing down your goals forces you to get clear on what, exactly, you want to accomplish. The best goals are specific. When we are clear and specific we turn on our reticular activation system becoming more aware of opportunities and ideas that will help move our goals forward.
• Writing builds stronger neural pathways in our brain. Bringing together both our right and left or creative and logical brains. The goal becomes a part of our unconscious mind.
• Writing down the goal helps boost your motivation. When you write down your goals, you do more than just thinking about them. This then creates a sense of urgency to move towards your goal, to take action.
• Writing increases your focus. You wrote a clear, specific goal. You know what it looks like. You can see it, feel it, taste it, hear it! When you have this much clarity and focus, you can ignore all the other noise.
• Writing down your goal reduces your stress level. It eliminates noise in your head. You don’t have to keep it all inside of you.
• Writing actually helps you achieve bigger goals. When we write it down, you can then break it down into smaller pieces (I like 90-day mini-goals to achieve the big goal). Once a goal is broken down into a smaller, part, we feel less overwhelmed and can make big things happen.
• Writing down the goals allows you to then track your progress. We are human. Life will just keep happening to us. So, delays, mis-takes, shiny objects will happen. However, if we have written down our goal in a way that is clear and specific, we can track our progress. Tracking helps us see when we have deviated off script it also helps us celebrate our wins! Tracking also keeps your goal top of mind as you look at it regularly and keep your focus.

When we do our 90-day goal-setting workshops always celebrate our wins, review or set our intention and goals for the year and then we do the same for the current quarter. I love 90-day planning because we do tend to lose focus. Yet, every 90 days, we get to measure where we are, re-plan and re-focus. At least it ensures that you don’t go too long deviated off course. Most importantly, our goals are written down. Essentially, we write them three times, encoding them into our unconscious as we do (yearly goals, quarterly goals, strategies to reach those 90-day goals and finally detail plans to achieve those goals. We do all the thinking and planning ahead of time so we can move forward every day!

I think the little bit of effort needed to write and plan my goals to create such big results is totally worth it!

Tell me, are your goals written down?

“Pay attention to the welfare of your innermost being, for from there flows the wellspring of life.”

Proverbs 4:23