Have you set your SMART goals? Are you practicing habits that will help you achieve them? There are two more things that will significantly impact the likelihood of reaching your goals. Creating a review process and having accountability for your goals will help you achieve them.
Regularly review
After thinking through your goals, you will want to have them all clearly written down. If you haven’t done that yet, you can get the free SMART goals worksheet by filling out the form below to help you.
Reviewing your goals continues to solidify them in your mind. It reminds you what you are working toward.
I don’t know about you, but I get distracted by what feels like immediate needs in life. If I don’t continually revisit my goals, it would be easy for my priorities to become what feels urgent rather than what is actually most important.
Regularly reviewing your goals helps you to stay focused on the end game. If you put the time and effort into setting your goals, don’t let yourself forget them.
Revisiting your goals reminds you to actively continue taking steps towards them. Your SMART goals need to be broken down into actionable tasks, which will keep you focused and on track.
Keep your goals at the forefront of your mind. Save them on your phone and set a recurring alarm to remind yourself to read them. Another option is printing
Accountability
With anything we might want to change in our lives, accountability is a key piece to the puzzle. When we pursue our goals alone, it is easy to justify, be dismissive, and get lost in our own (perhaps inaccurate) thinking.
Accountability allows other people into your life. It does require being vulnerable, open, and honest. It also requires committing to that person or group of people and to challenge them when necessary and to be there to cheer them on too!
My experience with accountability
I’ve had some areas of accountability throughout my life. Often it was with one person and for a specific purpose. This past year, I was part of a group of four women who met monthly to discuss and review our goals.
Our meeting structure was relaxed, but it definitely made a difference in my life in the following ways:
- knowing people would be checking in
- having cheerleaders
- encouraging others
- learning from each other
Checking in
I thought about my goals more often knowing that we would be meeting to talk about them. I am self-driven, but knowing that I’d have conversations with these ladies about my goals made me focus more and push harder.
Cheerleading
It makes such a difference when you have people who know your goals and are cheering you on. In many of the wins I had this past year, I sent them a group text right away letting them know. Knowing people have your back and are supporting you and cheering you on is wonderful.
Encouraging
It’s also a great feeling to be a cheerleader and encourager for others. Being invited into someone’s life where they share some of their biggest challenges is sacred. It’s a privilege to listen, help, and support others in their goals.
Learning
Being in a group like this helped us all learn from each other. We all have unique life experiences. Each of us views the world a little bit differently.
We’ve been able to offer advice and resources to each other and be a sounding board for one another offering new ideas we wouldn’t have thought of on our own. Every one of us learns and grows in this process.
Our friendships deepening was an added bonus to being in this group. We enjoyed doing life together, which even included a beach weekend away with all of us and our spouses and bingo night on another occasion. We ended the year celebrating our victories.
Everyone can use encouragement and a place of belonging. I’m excited to meet with these ladies again this coming year.
It’s been great to see how people have grown in their goals and how things change from one year to the next. Review and accountability have helped us all do a better job with our goals.
A resource to help with your goals
To help you with your goal setting and implementation, I created the Simply Focused Workbook. The worksheets are designed to help you think through your values and goals, to create specific goals, and to break those goals down into actionable steps.
There are pages for picking a word of the year and for planning celebrations as you meet milestones towards your goals. Included are sheets on assessing habits and tracking them to help you stay the course as you create new habits.
Studies have shown that you’re 42% more likely to achieve your goals when you write them down and these worksheets will help you to think through and plan out your goals for the year.
Start today setting goals that will change your life!
For further details on the Simply Focused Workbook and to order click HERE.
Have you tried having a review process and accountability for your goals in the past? If so, did that make a difference for you? I’d love to hear about it in the comments section.
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