06 Mar Do You Want Some Help In Achieving Your Goals?

Over the last two weeks, I’ve shared four key steps you need to take in order to be one of the 8% who succeeds in achieving their goals. We’ve explored how important it is to:

1.   Get clear on what it is that you really really want

2.   Connect with all the reasons why you want what you want

3.   Imagine what your goal will look like so that it feels real to you

4.   Get into action rather than stall because of overwhelm

(In case you missed it, you can catch up on those previous posts here and here.)

However, probably the most important thing is the fifth step – getting support in place to help you achieve your goals. This is very often the difference between success and failure and one that, to my cost, I learned late in life.

What support will help you achieve your goals?

I used to think I had to do it all on my own and that asking for support would be seen as a sign of weakness. Which had me putting huge pressure on myself to succeed, meant I often didn’t achieve what really mattered to me – all of which left me feeling frustrated and exhausted and on the road to burnout.

However, I now know from personal experience that getting support is key. It’s been a critical factor both in the success of my current business and in creating a life that now works for me. Ten years ago I had neither!

Research backs this up. Just setting a goal means you’re only likely to have a 10%* chance of achieving it. Tell someone about your goal and why it matters to you and your likely success rate jumps to 65%*.

How to increase your chances of success to 95%

This ramps up to 95%*, if you build in ongoing check-ins with someone who will hold you accountable in an appropriate way for following through on what you said you would do.

You might decide to share your goal and arrange regular times to check-in with a friend or a coach or a mentor. Make sure to choose someone who is not personally invested in you achieving your goal (such as a partner who could pressurise rather than support you). Someone who believes in you, wants the best for you and will encourage and support you to keep going. And, most importantly, will call you out and challenge you when your mind starts tricking you into believing you can’t do it or that what you want is not possible (which I promise you it will!).

Alternatively, find a group of like-minded folk with a shared purpose to support each other to achieve their goals. Come together on a regular basis to feed in about your progress, to get support if you find yourself stuck, celebrate your wins and, generally, hold each other accountable.

Whichever way you prefer to do it, help yourself to achieve success by getting some support in place. It’s probably the most important thing! 

If you would like to know more about  how to build your own or your team’s attitudes to success, email caroline@attitudecoach.co.uk

* The American Society of Training and Development (ASTD)