Make Your Goals A Reality
At Valkyrie HQ we are HUGE on goal setting - our little brand wouldn’t be here without it! It’s an awesome tool AND a learnable skill that we’ve loved to share with our audience from day one, whether that’s through workshops, ebooks or now - blog form.
It’s definitely a tool that takes practice to create, the benefit is that whether you do it once a year, every month or even more often - you’ll still see the benefits. There’s something magical about declaring your intentions and dreams to the world (even if it’s from the privacy of your notebook) that makes them seem much more real and achievable.
The main barrier we find people face is not dreaming big enough. It’s a sad fact that many of us are very quick to stamp on our dreams before we’ve even allowed ourselves to fully realise them. This is often due to limiting beliefs we’ve gained from the people around us, from past failures or preconceived ideas of what’s sensible, reasonable and possible. Our BIGGEST tip - if you only take one thing from this post - dream bigger, further and more outrageously. Allow yourself to want success - whatever that looks like to you - and it will be that much closer.
As we mentioned above, we often run goal setting workshops (we also offer these for businesses and groups - just reach out through the contact page) and have developed an ebook work booklet to take you through the goal setting process we use. You can find it here.
We’ll outline the steps we use below, but feel free to download the book to work alongside or in your own time.
1 What’s stopping you?
As we mentioned above, our limiting beliefs often get the best of us. Before you set your goals, work out what’s holding you back, and recognise whether they’re real issues - or just a story you’re telling yourself.
2 Who inspires you?
It can be helpful to brainstorm a few people who really inspire you (real, imaginary, relatives, celebrities, historical figures etc) and identify what it is you admire about them. Recognising their inspiring traits can help you realise what you want to work on.
3 Your ideal world
We like to do a visualisation at this point - imagine your dream life, without anything to hold you back - time, money, location, qualifications, family - and ask yourself what you would be doing each day.
You can visualise, journal or even research these ideas (pinterest is a great tool).
4 What’s really important?
From the above steps, you’ll start to get an idea of the values, traits and areas of life that really matter to you. Once you have these, it’s easy to set goals that really excite and motivate you - because they align with your core beliefs.
5 Set your goals
Now the groundwork is done - you can start to set your goals. Here’s some tips to make them achievable and actionable.
- Use time frames (in six months, once a week, twice a month)
- Use powerful, first person, present tense language (I am, I have)
- Write them down! This makes it more real and more of a commitment
- Start with big goals for years away then break them down for closer timeframes (10yrs - 5yrs - 1yr - now)
- Go big - a great goal will simultaneously challenge, scare and excite you!
E.g. In 12 months time I have saved $5,000 towards my business. I watch the sunrise 3 times a week, starting monday. I meditate for 2 minutes every day starting today. In 6 months I am competing in my first marathon.
6 Stick to it
Some tips to stick to your goals and keep them front of mind:
- Write them on your lockscreen
- Tell people - a close friend or post on social media if you’re brave
- Put reminders in your calendar - to action your goals and to reset them in 6/12 months
7 Detach
Arguably the most important step, we need to be able to detach from the how and when of achieving our goals. It’s so easy to get caught up in the idea of achieving our goals in a certain way, we can block of the chance of them unfolding in an unexpected way. Trust that by putting out the intention and effort the end goal will be achieved as it is meant to be.
Hopefully these steps have helped you refine your goal setting process. Remember to use the free ebook linked here, and feel free to reach out if you’d like to organise a workshop or 1:1 goal setting call here.
