Get The Support You Need & Practice Self-Kindness for Powerful Results
If you’ve been following along this month, you’ll know that I am doing a five-part series on getting new results in new ways to kick off the new year. This is because studies show that by the end of January almost half of those who’ve made New Year’s Resolutions will have already given up on them. Not to mention that many of the goal-setting processes we’re taught to use in our businesses and organizations are not terribly effective. And I want you to be successful at achieving your most important goals in the new year!
This five-part series will give you a different approach. It’s designed to help you set a solid foundation with actionable steps to achieve your most important goals.
If you have important goals for the coming year, you’ve struggled to achieve what you set out to in the past, or if you’re feeling a little unclear as to what your goals are, the good news is that there are simple, effective techniques that do work.
Commit to carving out a few minutes each week this month to set yourself up for success as you define it in the new year.
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These steps are powerful whether you’ve got big changes to make or things are going well and you’re ready to take it up a notch. The five steps give you a solid foundation along with the follow-through that’s key to bringing your dreams to fruition.
If you haven’t read or completed Step One: Be Strategic, Step Two: Be Specific, Step Three: Be Steady and Step Four: Know When to Simplify then I encourage you do do these first.
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Prefer to watch? Here’s the video:
You’ll need just a few minutes for each step – time well-spent so that you can bring your best out at work and live a more satisfying life.
Mindset Matters
To support your success in new ways, you need to find support that not only helps you achieve sustainable results but that is also inspiring, fun and enjoyable. Studies show you’re much more likely to achieve your goals in a positive frame of mind.
It’s important to envision success and get a clear picture of what this looks like, but it’s also important to prepare in advance for those moments and times when you’re feeling stuck or things don’t go as planned.
This is the step where you decide how you’ll support yourself ideally before things get tough or aren’t going the way you’d hoped. Commit now to doing what you need to do to acknowledge the challenge, to pause and rest or refuel if needed and to shift to a more positive mindset. This will help you cultivate resiliency and make better decisions in the midst of challenging times.
STEP FIVE: Get Support
Getting the right support can be one of the smartest personal and professional decisions you ever make – and it’s good for business, too. There are a number of reasons for this. Here are a few that clients have reflected to me over the years. I’ve also experienced them myself in working and training with professional coaches – as I believe the most effective coaches commit to their own professional development and personal growth. This is part of why coaching is a part of my own annual development and business plan:
- Increased Clarity and Focus: You need to figure out what you want and how to make it happen. Sometimes we are just too involved in our day-to-day work to be able to effectively step back and get clarity on a particular opportunity, challenge or situation. Working with a coach or consultant to parse things out can not only increase your clarity and focus but ultimately increases your effectiveness as you’re better able to focus your time and energy on what’s most important.
- Sound Guidance: You’re trying to move forward with a major goal, maybe to re-energize your career or build a new business or make time for an important personal priority, and you want sound guidance. It can be difficult to know whether an idea or opportunity is good or bad for you and having an experienced professional to talk things through with and to challenge your assumptions helps you find more effective solutions. Additionally, having an unbiased yet experienced perspective is incredibly effective at helping parse through perception versus reality so that you make more effective decisions.
- Action & Accountability: You want to go beyond talking and start doing—taking inspired action to create sustainable changes in your life. You want someone to hold you accountable for accomplishing those steps. Having a coach or even an experienced mentor act as an accountability partner helps to make us keep our most important commitments.
- Increased Confidence: We can be our own worst critics. We all have an inner dialogue and that dialogue tends to be habitual. If you slow down and begin to pay more attention to your thoughts and inner dialogue, you may notice it’s more negative than you’d like. This negative dialogue is one of the biggest inhibitors to our success. A good coach will not only help you get a clear picture of what success looks like for you – and take you through processes to shift that inner dialogue – but also guide you to put a plan or strategy in place that will build confidence and help eliminate doubts. Confidence is critical to success, but it can be difficult to build our own self-confidence.
- Clear Hurdles: You want to make changes in your business or your life and are willing to do the work necessary, but you feel stuck or aren’t making the progress you’d like. We all have ways that we resist even some of the things we say we want. A good coach will help you break through common blocks like fear, inertia, procrastination or lack of clarity so that you’re getting traction – more easily – on what’s most important.
Support Yourself With Self-Compassion & Kindness
When you’re feeling frustrated and not sure why you aren’t getting the new results you want, often the best thing you can do is practice some self-compassion and kindness. Although it may seem counterintuitive at first, these times can leave you feeling unclear, stuck or just not moving forward in the way you’d like – and criticizing yourself or beating yourself up won’t help. When this happens:
- Practice self-kindness and self-compassion by being more understanding toward yourself. Imagine you’re talking with a close friend or loved one. How would you speak to them if they said they felt they were stuck or had failed in some way? Chances are you’d be kinder, warmer and more generous. Practice this with yourself.
- Talk it out. Find a trusted friend, mentor, colleague or coach to talk through your thoughts, feelings and frustrations. Ask for honest feedback and advice. Be willing to look at where you may be getting in your own way or need to adjust course. Having someone else’s perspective can be invaluable, especially during challenging times.
- Practice self-inquiry. If you find yourself not taking actions you intend to, ask yourself why. Is it that you are unclear as to the very next step? In other words, are there a few steps in between where you are now and what you thought the very next step was? Or is there something more that’s tripping you up?
If you make any resolution at all, resolve to avoid shaming, criticizing or guilt-tripping yourself along the way. Accept yourself even when you don’t quite achieve what you set out to. You’re much more likely to follow-through on commitments from a positive frame of mind so:
- How and where can you support yourself – and in turn your business or career – in a new way this year?
- How can you be kinder to yourself this year?
- How might acting from a place of self-compassion affect the way you choose to move in the direction of your most important goals?
- How might you learn from fears and even failure?
Remember that when you are on the threshold of making changes, it can be most supportive to talk about your thoughts, goals and feelings with a trusted friend, colleague, or skilled professional who can help you make sense of what is going on – as well as what steps are most effective to help you achieve what you’ve set out to.
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If you are looking for professional guidance and support, I am here to help. Contact me to learn more or complete this form to see if you qualify for a complimentary strategy session.
You can also learn more about me, read more blog posts, download free tips to create a business and a life you love, or check out some of the stories of people who have worked with me.