Goal-Setting Tips for a Successful New Year
Every year, we promise ourselves this year will be the year! The year I will lose the weight. The year I will change jobs. The year I’ll start saving. etc. We all do it, and for good reason! We are seasonal creatures, and it is a great ritual to come together at the end of each year, celebrate with loved ones, and then to hit the ground running in the new year. There are two problems we face, when approaching new years’ goals:
Which goals should I pursue?
How do I sustain my motivation to make a longterm change?
1. Choosing the Right Goals
The 4 Origins of Intent
This is is a model I was introduced to via prominent psychiatrist and online coach, Dr. Alok Kanojia “Dr. K” [1], and it stacks up to my life experiences to date. Simply, put, this model looks at the four areas, our goals may orginate from:
Desires - External, worldly and usually material. e.g. “I want to be rich, have a nice car, a hot partner, etc.”
Shoulds - Again external, but these are pressures that are conditioned into you by other people. e.g. “I should be married by 30”, “I should lose weight because my doctor told me to.”
Values - These are things we actually care about, that are linked to our innate preferences. These are things we actually can’t control very much. For example, I value being a personal trainer, because fitness seems to be one of the few topics where I can sustain my focus for hours, without any external pressure to do so. Or for someone else it could be “I want to get married because I really value an intimate lifelong connection with one person”.
Duty - These are similar to shoulds but they come from an internal calling to do so. e.g. “I feel a duty to provide for my family”, or “I feel a duty to publish as much content as I can around topics that could help people”.
In general, the goals that come from a place of values, and duties will be much easier to pursue, because their origin is internal. They require no external sources of motivation, and in a way, it means that we can tap into limitless motivation to pursue these goals.
Operationalise the Goal
Our goals often take the form of abstract goals like “getting in shape”, or “making my business a success”. If our goals remain in abstract terms, they will also remain fantasies. We need to envision a specific endpoint, and work backwards to fill in, smaller, achievable goals along the way.
Action Oriented
Once we have operationalised our long-term goal, we have essentially identified a number of actions that lie between us and achievement. These actions now need to become our goals, because our actions are the only things we can control. I can’t control the number of coaching clients I will get in any given month, but I can control how much content I put out, and how many prospective clients I reach out to on any given month.
2. Sustaining Motivation overtime
Managing attention
The origin of motivation, lies not in “wanting”, but in focusing attention. Both attention, and motivation are mediated by the dopaminergic reward circuitry.
We need to focus as much of our attention as possible on the actions we have identified. We need not concern ourselves with what others are doing, or where we want to be. We need to give as much of our precious energy as possible to the process we already laid out via operationalising our goals.
Have you ever heard the saying, “where focus goes, energy flows”? . Focusing on anything else is a fool’s errand because it is typically something outside the realm our control.
However, managing attention does not come easily to everyone. In addition to putting this principle into practice, you can simultaneously train your capacity to direct your attention, via meditation. A simple way to get started is as follows:
Sit upright with your eyes closed, focusing on your breath.
As you find your mind wandering, pull your attention back to your breath.
Start with doing this for 5 minutes, adding 30seconds to your total time each session, until you can continuously do this for 10 minutes at a time.
Make time for this practice at least 3 times per week, to maintain your newfound ability to direct your attention.
The goal with this exercise is to progressively train the pre-frontal cortex in the brain, in the same way we train any muscle in our bodies. We are training our ability to bring our focus back to the task at hand, no matter how uncomfortable our circumstances may get, or no matter how often we may get distracted. It doesn’t matter so much how often you get distracted. We are more concerned with your ability to consistently come back to your original intention.
Curb your desires
This is related to the previous point. Getting lost in the fantasy of the endpoint, your attention is not directed at putting one foot in front of the other. However, desires are strong, and can be one hell of a distraction. As I take on new clients, I often find myself getting lost in fantasies of how my life will look if I keep getting similar results.
It is a constant battle with my ego, to nip such thoughts in the bud, and come back to the tasks that got me my results in the first place.
Reward activity, not results.
Action drives results, so reward yourself for taking action, not for the result. Remember, we have already established that you are not in control of the result, so why reward yourself for them?
Let’s say as part of your weight-loss goal, you want to lose 10KG in 12 weeks, and you wanted to reward yourself with a weekend long diet-break at the 6 week mark. If you can confidently say that you stuck to the process with about 70% consistency, then by all means go ahead. If on the other hand, you were basing that decision on your weight on the scales, you’re judging yourself based on factors that aren’t entirely in your control. For example, you may have a bad trainer, who had you on the wrong diet to begin with. Or on the other hand, you may have lost a lot of weight due to a bad case of diarrhoea.
By rewarding activity, you are conditioning yourself to continue taking action. This leads to limitless motivation.
Adopt a Growth Mindset
Note, that in the previous section I stated 70% adherence. If we were meant to be tunnel-visioned goal executers, we would be robots, and I would be a lot more worried about AI replacing us. Our distractibility is essential to our humanity, and is a feature, not a bug. It allows us to spot threats and opportunities, and without it, we wouldn’t be able to identify worthwhile goals in the first place.
Thus it is imperative that you adopt a growth mindset [2], where you realise that you will not take action with 100% conviction from the turn of the new year, and that you’re not designed to. You can however, bit by bit, deconstruct your bad habits and formulate new ones. Rome was not built in a day, and neither is long-term personal change. Real change is progressive, and its number one enemy is burnout.
If 50% capacity is all you can give your goals in January, you’ll work your way up to 60% in February, and so on.
Perfection is the enemy of done!
Outsource Your Goal Management
If you are completely new to personal development, the above process can seem quite overwhelming. Even if you are seasoned pro, it can make sense to outsource your personal development so that you don’t need to focus so much attention on the process itself. This frees up your attention for action, and for other areas of your life that matter to you!
That’s where hiring a coach can be invaluable. I am on-hand to help you realise REAL longterm transformation in both body and mind coming into 2024. Drop me an email at michael@michael-linehan.com to take the first step!
[1] https://www.healthygamer.gg/about/guide
[2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindset-How-Fulfil-Your-Potential/dp/1780332009