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Personal Inventory: Setting Up for Success in the New Year (and Decade)

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The holiday season is also the end of the year, which makes it a great time to reflect—to review our progress from the past year and set ourselves up for success in the New Year. I don’t know about you, but this year-end seems especially significant to me because it’s not just the end of a year—it’s the end of a decade. For some, it’s just the turning of the calendar, but it actually provides us an opportunity to “re-set” on a major level—to think not just about what we want for 2020, but for the next ten years, and how we might pursue those goals.

So whatever your particular holiday traditions are, I’d like to encourage you to take a little time for some “personal inventory” between now and the end of the year—take stock of your situation and where you are with your own goals in preparation for the new year and decade. I call it “personal inventory” because that’s really what it’s about. It’s taking stock of where you are, what you have, and what you still want to do, so by the time the calendar turns, you’ve taken a deep breath and you’re now mentally and emotionally prepared to jump into the next season with both feet.

What does taking personal inventory look like? It might be different for everyone, but let me just share a step-by-step example of what it might look like for you.

Take Stock of Your Goals from the Past Year

Hopefully, you set at least a few goals or milestones for 2019. How did you do with them? How many of those goals did you reach? Did some of them get forgotten or fall by the wayside? This isn’t a time to self-judge, but simply to give an honest accounting of how this past year played out for you, and what you were able to achieve. Specifically, try writing down the following:

  • List your successes from the past year. (You might be surprised at how many there are when you actually count them.)
  • List your disappointments. Again, without self-judgment, list the things that perhaps didn’t go your way this year. (Remember, this is just inventory—taking stock of your own assets and liabilities, so to speak.)
  • List your unmet goals from the year. Try to recount what happened in each situation. Did something go haywire? Did you lose focus? Did you just not give yourself enough time?
  • Re-evaluate your goals. Are there any unmet goals you’d like to take into the new year? Are there any that are no longer important to you?

Put the Year to Rest

Once you’ve taken time to reflect on the past year, it’s time to close the chapter. Imagine yourself packing up all the events of the year—successes as well as failures—into an imaginary box that represents 2019. As you do, I recommend taking the following steps in your mind:

  • Take a moment to savor the successes. (Go ahead—you deserve it!)
  • Take a moment to mourn the losses (including any failures).  Give yourself permission to grieve, to feel sorry for yourself, just for a moment or two…then pack them in the box and move on. This is especially important if you’ve had a difficult year or faced some additional challenges.
  • If you identified any goals you’d like to carry over into 2020, pull those out of the box for next year.
  • Close the box, lock it and put it away.

Look to the Next Year

Now that you’ve put the past to rest, it’s time to look toward the future with a clean slate and the burdens lifted. Whatever goal-setting habits you have personally, it’s time to put those to use. (If you don’t have a goal-setting routine, check out this blog for some guidance.) Write down your goals, then set up some milestones and check points through the year to track your progress. Just as you closed the box on last year, you’re opening the box on a new one.

Establish Successful Habits

Once you’ve identified your goals, you can begin making plans for how you’re going to stay on track during the next year and beyond. If you haven’t yet started practicing my 5 Steps to a Successful Day, the New Year is a great time to hit the start button on it!

Whether you’ve had a good year or a disappointing one…regardless if you’re ending 2019 strong or if you would have preferred a different ending to the year…if you will take the time to conduct a personal inventory like I’ve described, I’m confident you can find at least a bit of internal closure so you can face the next year with hope and anticipation. If you are ending 2019 between jobs or careers and you want some help getting on track for 2020, I’m always here to help you reach those goals. Let’s have a free half-hour consultation together to take an inventory together. Email me at terrylynn@giraffesconsulting.com, or call me at 646-320-1126.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

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Effective Goal-Setting Tips for the New Year

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new year goals

 

Welcome to 2019! One of the best parts of turning the calendar is the realization that each year brings new opportunities. No matter how challenging 2018 might have been, you have the chance to hit the reset button, so to speak—to establish a new set of goals and find a fresh resolve to reach them.

To make the most of this opportunity, before you get buried in the post-holiday busy-ness, I’d like to challenge you to take some time and decide what you really want from this new year. From those desires, I encourage you to write down a set of goals and keep them before you through the year. If you’re between jobs or careers, finding a new position will likely be one of your primary goals—but whatever the goals are, writing them down and revisiting them will increase your chances of success for the year. Here are some tips for setting goals for 2019 that you can actually reach.

Set Goals, Not “Resolutions”

Let’s be clear: I’m not talking about making New Year’s Resolutions here. A resolution isn’t a goal—it’s more like a wish, a statement of intent or a hollow promise we make ourselves, typically without any substance or mechanism to help us carry it out. This is why 80 percent of New Year’s Resolutions fail by the middle of February. That does no one any good; in fact, it generally tends to make us feel worse about ourselves in the end. Don’t make empty promises to yourself; set tangible goals, preferably with a plan as to how you’ll reach them. It may sound like semantics, but psychologically speaking you’re much more likely to reach a goal than to keep a resolution. 

Be Specific

Vague goals rarely get reached simply because the finish line isn’t clear. If your goal is to lose weight this year, how much weight loss would make you feel successful? If you want to earn more money, what does “more money” look like in dollars and cents? When you express a goal in vague terms, it’s not really a goal—it’s more like a dream. Setting specific goals helps us turn dreams into reality.

Set Goals that Stretch You

Some people set goals that are so easy to reach that they could do it in their sleep. That kind of goal won’t help you grow. Others set goals that are so unrealistic that they’re virtually impossible to reach; that kind of goal just sets you up for disappointment, and you’ll lose your resolve fairly quickly. I recommend finding a happy medium between these two extremes. Set goals that are challenging enough to make you grow, but still reachable with effort.

Make a Plan of Action for Your Goals

Setting goals alone isn’t enough—goals don’t magically fulfill themselves. You also need a plan of action, a set of benchmarks to help you achieve the goal. This is especially important for goals that stretch you, as mentioned above. For example, if you plan to lose 50 pounds this year, what changes will you make to your lifestyle and diet to help you lose that weight? How much should you have lost by April? By June? Try breaking the goal down into tangible steps or smaller portions with dates on the calendar by which to measure your progress. This helps keep you focused on the tasks at hand so you’ll be much more likely to reach those goals.

If one of your goals for 2019 is to land your dream job, I can help! For a free 15-minute consultation, shoot me an email at terrylynn@giraffesconsulting.com, or give me a call at 646-320-1126. Working together, we can help you achieve that goal.

 

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Career Goal-Setting Guide for 2018

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If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else. –Yogi Berra

Welcome to 2018! I hope you enjoyed the holidays, and I hope you took a bit of time for yourself, as well.

As the new year gets underway, it’s naturally a time for goal-setting. We’re not talking about “New Year’s resolutions,” the type of promise so many of us make to ourselves that we end up breaking within the first month. Rather, I’m talking about setting realistic, accessible goals for this year—sort of a sort of road map for what you want out of your career this year. Sadly, some of us get lost in the weeds even during the goal-setting stage, to the point that we have trouble figuring out our goals, let alone reaching them. So for our first blog post of 2018, I thought it would be helpful to provide some guidelines and tips for helping you identify specifically what you want this year as far as a career or job, and what tangible steps you’re going to take to reach those goals.

Put It in Writing

It seems simple, but I can’t stress it enough: Write your goals down. The list can be simple—it can be one goal or ten—but it needs to be on paper. Don’t keep it in your head. Even if you have a remarkable memory, there is something about the act of writing it down on paper that makes a goal more tangible and real. It gives the goal more weight, making us feel more accountable for it. When a goal is just in your head, it’s not really a goal—it’s an idea. Write it down; bring it out of your head into the world, and put the paper in a place where you’ll revisit it regularly and be reminded.

Keep Your Goals Ambitious but Reachable

In my experience, people do either one of two things when they’re setting goals. They either make the goal so ambitious that it’s nearly impossible to achieve, or they set the bar so low that there’s no sense of motivation or excitement. Over-ambitious goals can cause you to lose heart, while under-ambitious goals carry no gravity and are easily forgotten. I find the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. Make the goal stretch you a bit, but not so much that you’ll give up on it in a couple of months.

Set Mile Markers

For each goal you set for yourself, ask yourself: What specific steps do I need to take to reach this goal? From there, I recommend laying out what I call “mile markers”—specific actions you will take in sequence to get you closer to your goal. For example, if your goal this year is to start a new business, your action steps might look something like:

  • Determine what product or service to offer
  • Figure out your target market
  • Raise capital if necessary
  • Consult with an accountant or attorney for the best way to structure your business
  • Determine your sales strategy

…and so on, and so forth.

Use a System that Works for You

There are a wide range of planning tools on the market that can help you keep track of your goals throughout the year. None is particularly better than the other, as long as you use a system that works for you. The important thing to remember is that you need to set the goals and establish a plan of action to reach those goals. Without these two elements in place, you may not have the discipline to reach the goals.

If your primary goal for 2018 is to launch a new career or land a new job, I’m here to help! (That’s why they call me the “employment whisperer.”) For a free 30-minute consultation to find out how career coaching can help you reach your goals, give GiraffesConsulting a call today at 646-320-1126.