Every year we start with the best intentions, we set goals, get excited about them, follow through for the first couple of weeks and then old habits come back, excuses start to rear their ugly heads, life happens, and it gets to the end of the year again and nothing’s really changed.

Last year I had some pretty big goals I wanted to achieve in all aspects of my life: build a new home (we are a family of seven squished into a three bedroom house), grow my home business to a massive level, have a weekend away with just my husband, organise a family holiday…

And then life happened.  

One of my children has severe asthma and in March was in ICU with a severe attack.  As her trigger is aerosol deodorant, we decided to start homeschooling, which was another big change in our lives.  Then in July she started having seizures and we found out she had epilepsy…

These medical challenges all had a massive impact and were clearly great reasons to not achieve my goals (especially if you factor in four other children who had their own challenges).  

So basically, excuses were plenty.  

Now  don’t get me wrong, looking back at these hurdles has taught my family some amazing lessons and shown us just how strong we are.  But as I sat on my lounge on Boxing Day I started to think about 2019 and how I could ensure I actually saw my goals through to the end.  

So I started watching lots of video links, listening to podcasts, and reading journals about goals, and setting up your year for success.  From all of that I’ve come up with a plan, and thought I would share it with you:

It’s so easy to say you want a new house, but you need to be specific about the house you want, what suburb you want to live in, how many bedrooms it should have, two stories or single, does it have a pool? If, it’s a car, which one exactly? How much money do you want to be earning from your job/business? What do you want to be doing in a new job/business? How do you want to spend your days, doing what exactly?

Spend time dreaming like you did as a child, before people started telling you there were limitations on what you could achieve. Have fun thinking about your future life and be as specific as you can.  

This is not an ‘I want to win Lotto’ kind of dream, it’s one you can achieve as a capable, intelligent, driven person that has no obstacle too wide or too high in their way. Dream with the knowledge that you are capable of anything, in fact look at your goals and double them.  If you want to earn $10,000 a month, set a stretch goal of $20,000 a month to show just how limitless you really are.

Once you have set your goals clearly, it’s time to write them down. Buy yourself a nice journal, use different coloured pens for each goal, have fun with it.  Write things down in the present tense: I am so grateful that in November 2019 $20,000 went into my bank account. I am excited that we are spending next Christmas in our new home. It feels so nice to be driving in my new _______ car (remember be specific).

Now that you have written down your goals it’s time to be surrounded by them.  It’s time to imagine yourself already achieving these goals. How does that feel? Speak in the present tense.

Create a vision board, collect photos from Google and have them as a screensaver slideshow on your laptop, get a vision board app and make it your home screen or wallpaper on your phone. Surround and remind yourself constantly what you ARE achieving this year.

Work out what skills you are going to need to master to make these goals happen.  It’s great to visualise and write them down, but we also need to set a plan on how we’re going to make them happen.

Achieving your goals is like any journey: you need to have a clear map on how you’re going to get there.  Identify the skills needed and commit to learning them.

If your goal is to get a new job, then what skills are you going need? If it’s to build a new house, what knowledge to you need to do it successfully? For a car, what do you need to know about it to get the best deal? If it’s to be more positive, what books can you read to help on that journey?

Now that you’ve identified the skills you need, it’s time to make them part of your daily/weekly routine.  If you want to get a promotion, then commit to increasing your skills daily by listening to podcasts, finding a mentor, reading books, or going to training courses.

If you want to become healthier, commit to going to the gym on a regular basis and trying a new healthy recipe every week.

Focus on activities that will give you the results you are looking for – scrolling through Instagram posts of other people going to the gym isn’t going to give you results, but you going regularly will.  And finding a gym buddy will really motivate you.

Start to think about how you spend your time and how it is or isn’t helping you.

To ensure you remain positive and motivated, it’s important to surround yourself with the right people. We are a lot like a piece of fruit – if you place a piece of rotten fruit in a bowl of good fruit the good stuff ends up going mouldy as well.  

The same thing happens to us when we surround ourselves with negative people – we start to focus on the negative.  Start thinking about who you spend your time with. Are you surrounding yourself with people who will help you stay on track?  Are you with people that are moving in the same direction as you? Increase the positive influences in your life.

Make your goals a priority.  If you’re anything like me I have quite a lot of goals I want to achieve and that in itself can become quite overwhelming.  Take a good look at your goals and pick out the top three for your laser focus. In fact, as you look at them you might start to realise that if you focus on just one, the rest will happen.  

For me, I know I need to focus on my business.  If I succeed there, all my other goals will fall into place. So make your top 1, 2 or 3 goals your priority (and instead of watching the new season of The Bachelor, spend that hour on achieving your goals).

After all, the consequence of failing to reach your goals is much worse than the pain you go through to achieve them.

Lastly I have realised that I need feel worthy, and be worthy, of my goals coming true.  And you are WORTH it too!

No one ever achieved anything by playing small – you were designed for GREATNESS so dream big and know that you are more than capable of reaching the goals you were born to achieve.