It may be the end of January, but it’s still January. And that means…new goals! Now is the time when everyone is setting resolutions for their professional and personal lives…only to abandon them by February. I’m here to encourage you not to be a statistic! The good news is there are things you can do to make sure you stick to your goals to ensure you are productive all year long. See below for my top tips.

Set S.M.A.R.T goals

I often see agents setting goals that are unclear or too difficult to measure, making it so they feel defeated before they’ve even started. To make sure your goals are actionable and reachable, follow the SMART goal model. Each goal should have the below attributes:

• Specific 
• Measurable 
• Achievable
• Relevant 
• Time bound 

Don’t forget to really dig deep into the “measurable” attribute. Ask yourself how you will know when you have reached your goal. What data points will you look at? If your goal is not easy to measure, you should rework it.

Talk about your goals

Talk about your goals to anyone who will listen. Tell friends and family members so they can support you and help hold you accountable. When you are public with your goals, you’ll find that you really don’t want to fail. It can also be helpful to share your goals with a mentor or someone in your business whom you really respect–studies find that when we share our goals with someone we view as admirable, it helps us take our goals more seriously and work toward accomplishing them in the end. 

Working with a coach is a great way to help you track your progress toward your goals. This can also help you with the very first step of creating your goals if you don’t know where to start. Learn more about 1:1 coaching here.

Track your success

Track your goal progress and successes as you go. Find a way to track small steps toward your larger goal to help you stay motivated, because little accomplishments add up to big accomplishments! There are a ton of apps out there to help you with this, take a look at Way of Life, Strides, Habitica to name just a few. They’ll help you visualize your goals, keep you on track with notifications, and will allow you to see your metrics if you want to get really geeky. 

Reward yourself

Reaching your goals (big or small) is a great excuse to take yourself out to breakfast, plan a beach day, or spend the evening taking a hot bath with a glass of wine. Rewarding yourself in simple ways for small accomplishments can go a long way–rewards can help you stick to a habit that you wouldn’t have otherwise due to something called the “habit loop”. With habit loops, you create consistent behaviors based on cues, routines and rewards. For example: 

• Cue: You wake up early and go to the gym.
• Routine: You work out at the gym.
• Reward: You purchase a healthy and delicious smoothie after your workout.

These simple rewards can help push us to create consistent routines that become ingrained in our psyche over time.

Don’t beat yourself up

Be nice to yourself. If a friend had a setback and didn’t reach their goal, you wouldn’t yell at them! So be nice to yourself and remember to be your own friend. Don’t let your own inner-critic get in your head and distract you from your end-goal. Stay focused, sharp, and motivated so you can keep your eye on the prize. Remember, it’s a marathon, not a race. 

To learn more about how you can set realistic goals and achieve them by working with a 1:1 coach, click here! Cheers to accomplishing everything we set out to do this year, and more.