Tips & Tricks – 5 Tips for Accomplishing Your Goals

For the first Tuesday Tips & Tricks post, I want you to throw away your New Year’s resolutions & buckle up, because I’m going to teach you how to set up some good ol’ fashioned goals!

 Resolutions have always seemed kind of flaky to me. The definition of a resolution is: “a firm decision to do or not to do something.” Hmm… OK. I don’t know about you, but I need more structure than that in order to accomplish something!

 So let’s look at goals. The definition of a goal is: “”the object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result.” If you have a desired result in mind, it makes manifesting it so much easier!

Goals used to be intimidating to me, so I understand if you’re feeling that way as well. Despite that intimidation, I have set & achieved multiple goals over the past year, so today, I am sharing with you how I was easily able to do so.

Here are five tips & tricks to successfully set & achieve your goals:

Get all of those dreams out of your head and onto paper! No matter how silly you tell yourself your dreams & desires are – write them all down. And do so in a proactive, empowering way:

Or even more powerful, put it in the present tense:

You might even have to back up a smidge & acknowledge yourself first:

It took me a while to physically write that goal. It seemed absurd, impossible, and even greedy at the time. But I wrote it down – several times – and it quickly became less shocking & more doable.

Start with saying it to yourself. Say it in the shower, in the car, or other places where you’re alone.

Then tell other people your goal.

At first it feels weird, like you’re lying. You want to explain yourself. But over time you start to feel more comfortable & begin to believe it yourself. I caught myself doing this recently. I was telling someone, so comfortably, “I’m a photographer,” and stopped there. No further explanation of, “well, I still work a 9-5 job and do photography on the side, but my goal one day is to do photography full time.” None of that. I am a photographer. Period. It felt good. Really good!

Make a timeline. Physically draw a line on a long sheet of paper. At the far end (the right end), write your goal.

__________________________________________________ I own a photography biz.

Now add a date. Don’t think about all of the logistics or what it will take to get there. Think about when you ideally would want to be living that goal & write that date.

________________________________________ Aug. 2015 – I own photo business.

Congratulations! You have yourself a goal! See? Wasn’t that easy?

Still more to do though. Let’s keep going.

Fill in that timeline. You’re smart. You know some of the steps you need to do to complete your goal, so go ahead and fill them in. Completely filling it in might take a little research, but like I said, you’re smart. You can handle that!

For me, taking the first step on my timeline towards owning my photography business  became a mental block. My first step was to create a business plan. I had heard having a business plan was integral to starting a business, but had no idea how to create a business plan & really no desire to do so b/c it seemed boring. So I stalled on accomplishing my goal. I kept procrastinating that first step & therefore couldn’t get to the steps after it.

Then I got some sage advice: you can start where ever you want! Pick whatever is the most inspiring to-do item on your timeline, and do that first. For me, it was building a website, because that was creative. So I did that first. Then I was on my way to accomplishing my goal & I barely knew it b/c I was having fun! From there I skipped around to the other to-do items, even procrastinating on some of the less fun ones. But I even found creative ways to do those & did them quickly b/c by then, I could taste victory, which was inspiring in & of itself. Before I knew it – I was done! Goal achieved. On August 28th, I officially became the owner of Rachel E.H. Photography, LLC. My very own photography business.

Add some rewards to your timeline. For each piece of the puzzle you accomplish, reward yourself. Make the rewards equal to the amount of effort or benefit you’re gaining from accomplishing that task. For example, when I finished my cleanse last year, I bought myself a new Rebecca Minkoff handbag. That was a huge, tough accomplishment for me, so I figured it was worthy of a reward in the $100+ range!  When I finished editing all of my holiday mini-session photos after Thanksgiving, I rewarded myself with a night off, a hot bath, & some (gluten free, vegan) pizza!  I like to use manicures as rewards too! You get the idea. Give yourself something to look forward to. And have a really good, big reward waiting for when you fully accomplish your goal! It’s OK – you will deserve it!

 Hopefully this has made goal-setting & accomplishing more approachable for you. Now throw away those New Year’s resolutions & turn them into achievable, measurable goals! Tell me in the comments what goals you will accomplish in 2016.