Hi everyone.
Welcome back to Lavendaire.
It's Aileen.
So new year is right around the corner and that means it is goal setting season.
I know that we all love to set goals at the beginning of the year,
but I also know that around April or May,
we kind of fall off of our goals.
And then by mid-year,
we kind of forget about our goals altogether.
So how do we actually achieve the goals that we set for ourselves?
Today I'm going to show you how to set goals,
how to plan and prioritize your goals,
how to take action towards your goals,
and finally, how to actually follow through with your goals consistently.
Before I begin, make sure you subscribe to this channel
for more videos on personal growth and lifestyle design.
Just click it down below.
And also: we are doing a giveaway today.
So if you want to learn more about that,
stick around to the end of the video.
All right, let's start with the first step which is: Envision.
Before you even make a list of goals that you want to achieve this year,
you want to first start with a clear vision of what you want for your life.
Look into all the different areas of your life
and envision your ideal scenario in each area.
You want to look into your health, relationships,
career, personal growth, spirituality, creativity, adventure,
and any area that matters to you.
Your vision is your ultimate goal for what you want to achieve in this area of life.
And it's helpful to be super specific,
because if you just focus on career goals for the year,
your relationships might drop off and things like that.
Then you want to ask yourself:
What are the specific dreams or goals I want to achieve
in this area of life by the end of the year?
Do that for every single area that you envisioned your life in.
It should be pretty easy, because you have your vision
and then you can break down, “Okay, what is realistic?
What is doable within one year?”
What I personally like to do lately is start with the feeling
that I want to achieve, a feeling of how I want to feel in that area.
Say I want to feel glowy and fit and strong in health.
Start with the feeling and then come up
with the What’s and the How’s that you're going to achieve that feeling,
because I realized that when we're setting goals,
what we really want is the feeling of how it feels to have achieved that goal.
So you can start with the feeling and then ask yourself,
“Okay, what will help me get to that feeling?”
Or if you prefer, you can start with the goal,
but then you must break down: “Why do I want to achieve this goal?”
And ultimately: “What is the feeling that I want to get once I achieve this goal?”
Because what keeps you motivated is the Why,
the reason you set this goal in the first place.
That is super important and a lot of the Why has to do with how it makes you feel.
Here's an example to illustrate the feeling.
Say you have a goal this year to switch to another job,
a higher paying job, because you need more finances in your life.
You want more money and that's okay.
So ultimately, the Why of finding a higher paying job is money,
but underneath that is because you want a greater sense
of financial stability and security.
You want to able to feel safe.
You want to be able to afford everything that you want, without having to worry.
So the feeling that you want to achieve is that security, the safeness,
then, not having to be anxious or worried about money.
And lastly – this is really important –
but you want to make sure that your goals are super specific
and are within your sphere of control.
There are a lot of times where we set goals
where a lot of the goal is outside of our control,
and if things are outside of your control,
then you don't have that power.
You give your power to someone else or something outside of you.
For example, if you're starting a new YouTube channel,
you might say, “I want to hit 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year”.
And that might be realistic or it might not be realistic.
The truth is, there are so many things outside of your sphere of control
that it's really hard for you to predict whether or not you will hit that.
You know, there's so many external factors that come into play.
A better goal to set is: “I'm going to make one video a week every week this year”.
That is something that is completely within your control.
If you set a goal like that,
you'll feel more empowered because everything is in your control.
And if you don't reach that goal, then it really is all on you.
Moving onto the second step: Plan.
So by now, you probably have a list of dreams and goals
related to each area of your life and it might look overwhelming.
Now we're going to prioritize what are the most important goals
that you will work on this year.
Looking at your list of goals,
you might already have an idea of which ones are the most important to you.
So, star those.
But if you're having trouble prioritizing and picking which one to work on first,
then one way to figure out which one is the most important is to ask yourself:
“What is the impact of this goal?”
“If I were to achieve this goal, how much would it positively impact my life?”
Another way to decide which goal is important is to ask yourself,
"Which out of these goals is the scariest, the biggest, and the most intimidating goal?"
because goals that are scary are actually the goals that will push us to grow the most.
And that's why they're scary,
because we have to get real uncomfortable
and take some big risks to get there.
By determining the impact of the goal,
how much it'll change your life –
plus how scary the goal seems to you –
that's how you will know,
which are the most important goals that you should prioritize and do first.
So now I'm going to share a way you can plan and break down your goals,
so that you know exactly what you should be working on at any given moment.
I have something called the Action Planning Worksheet
that I made for the Dream Life Series last year.
I'll add the download link to the worksheet down below under “Resources”.
Basically, you want to look at your goal as an upside-down triangle.
At the top there's your main dream or goal that you want to achieve.
And then under that, it says your 90 day goal.
So you want to ask yourself, “Okay, what is my goal in the next 90 days?
What points do I want to reach in three months?”
Then you have to brainstorm what steps
you would have to take to reach that 90 day goal.
And it doesn't have to be chronological.
You can think of what steps you might have to take in order to get there.
Then after you finish brainstorming to the best of your ability,
you then prioritize and star the three most important tasks.
And then finally at the bottom of the triangle,
you pick one task, one tiny little action to do today – immediately, right now.
So, this is a way to break down your goals and plan how to make it happen.
And if you do decide to do this worksheet,
then I want to know: What is your 90 day goal?
Write it in the comment section down below.
And if you want, you can also put
the one task that you have to do today, the next step.
Aside from this action planning process,
I also like to plan quarterly and monthly goals.
I use the Artist of Life Workbook that I created
to plan at those quarterly and monthly goals.
And in this book, you also have quarterly and monthly reviews.
So each month or each quarter you set your goals,
and then you do that action planning system to break down
all the steps you think you have to take.
And then boil it down into the next step you should take.
The key is to take that step as soon as you can,
because you want to get the momentum going.
So, that leads me to step three: Take action.
It is so, so important to take action as soon as possible,
as soon as today – right now.
And that is because you want to get the ball rolling,
because once you take the first step,
you're going to be motivated to take the second step
and the third step and the fourth step.
And then the more steps you take, the faster the ball rolls down.
Going back to what I said earlier about making sure
that your goals are within your sphere of control,
the present moment, the “now” in front of us
is the only moment that we can control.
So you can only take your action right now.
If you wait until a future point,
it's going to be in your mind like,
“Oh, I'm going to do it tomorrow. I'm going to do it tomorrow.”
It's always going to live in the future,
and then you're going to procrastinate,
and then “tomorrow” will be two months later.
So always remember that your power is in the now,
and that's the main thing you want to keep in mind
if you want to keep executing your goals.
The next tip I have for you on following through your goals is to:
Keep the promises you make to yourself.
Too often, we make promises to ourselves and we break those promises.
You say, “I'm going to start a diet tomorrow.”
And then tomorrow comes and then you're like,
“Oh, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll do it another day.”
And what that does is, you lose trust with yourself
and when you lose trust with yourself,
your self-esteem goes down because you don't even believe yourself.
Making promises and keeping promises is not easy.
Knowing that, you should only make the promises that you know you can keep.
So start small: Make small promises to yourself
and then follow through on those small promises.
Once you can get the hang of like,
“Okay, I believe in myself, I'm following through with what I promised to myself,”
then you can make bigger promises.
But really, it's all about keeping that personal integrity
and making sure that you trust what you say,
because if you don't trust your own promises,
then you can just make goals all day and not do anything about it.
The next step to help you follow through and execute your goals is to ask yourself:
“What is the daily action that I want to commit to?”
So, if your goal is to write a book,
then your daily action is to sit down and write.
If your goal has a lot of different types of actions,
then just tell yourself the daily action is to sit down for a chunk of time.
Maybe it's one or two hours a day to work on that project,
whatever it may be,
whether you're researching or going out, meeting people or whatever.
You want to commit to something daily,
even if it's just a tiny action,
because it's so much better to work consistently daily
than it is to work on your projects sporadically.
Because if you work on it one week
and then skip a few weeks and then work on it,
it's going to be hard to build up momentum.
The advanced version of this daily action commitment is to
tie that daily action with some sort of reward.
So what is something that you love to do that you do every single day?
It could be having your coffee or eating dinner or watching Netflix.
So you want to make a promise to yourself,
tie your action with that reward.
Say “I will not allow myself to have coffee until I meditate,”
or “I will not allow myself to watch Netflix
until I've given my two hours of working on this project or this goal.”
That is a way to play a game with yourself
to be able to keep the promises you make to yourself because there's that reward.
Another thing that's really helpful is to track your progress.
If you're doing a daily action,
then have a calendar where you can mark off each day.
In the Artist of Life Workbook, I have a habit tracker.
So if you're tracking habits you cross it off.
Or if you're doing something that's weekly and not daily,
then I have the Consistency worksheets that I will also include down below,
where you can track your progress week to week.
So if you're working towards a goal,
you want to be able to kind of track
and celebrate the milestones that you're hitting as you get to that goal,
because it is worth celebrating.
It really doesn't matter whether you do this daily, weekly, or monthly.
You just want a system of tracking your progress
and checking in on how you're doing towards your goals.
Lastly, if you really want to be motivated to achieve your goals,
then accountability is the answer.
You want to keep yourself accountable,
and tracking yourself daily, that's a way to keep yourself accountable.
But I'm also talking about social accountability,
so getting other people involved,
whether you're posting it on social media,
announcing your goals publicly,
or announcing your goals to your friends or your family,
and actually making a deal with a person in your life
to keep you accountable to work towards that goal.
Maybe you want to make a bet like,
“I'll pay you $100 if I don't reach this goal,”
and then you're going to be more motivated to reach it.
If you're looking for an accountability buddy,
someone that you can work with to support
and encourage each other to reach your goals,
then I recommend our Facebook group or our Vibely club.
We have a Lavendaire Lifestyle Community on Facebook
where we have 10,000+ members.
And then we also have this new app called Vibely.
I'll link it down below, but basically,
it's an app to facilitate connection and meetups with other Lavi Loves.
Once you join, you get connected to Lavi Loves in your area.
And just today we had the first meetup in New York, and I am so happy about it.
It's so amazing to see you guys connect in person.
Everyone brought their Artist of Life Workbooks
and I thought that was really, really special.
There are people out there who also want to achieve their goals like you do,
and we can all work together to make those happen.
I hope you liked my tips on goal setting for the new year.
This whole system is baked into the Artist of Life Workbook that I created,
which I'll link below, and also link those free worksheets down below as well.
And now I'm going to talk about the giveaway that we are doing on Instagram.
Thanksgiving is around the corner,
so this is our gratitude giveaway as a thank you to you guys,
just for being here, just being part of this amazing community.
We're going to gift three Artist of Life Workbooks.
You can choose your color – it comes in lavender and gray –
and it's going to be on the @shoplavendaire Instagram account.
So I'll link that post.
All you have to do is follow our Instagram at @lavendaire and @shoplavendaire.
Comment on that post, following the prompt, and then tag a friend.
And that's it!
I wish you the best in the giveaway.
Thank you for watching,
and get ready for new year videos coming because they are coming.
I am so prepared with so much new year content,
but in the meantime, if you want to watch other videos,
I highly recommend you watch the How to Build Habits That Stick video,
because a lot of you probably want to build good habits in 2020,
so I'll link that here and down below.
I love you so much.
Bye!