With March literally just round the corner (seriously, when did that happen?), the “New Year Resolutions” period is most definitely over. That means enough time has passed to be able to analyse if you are on track with the goals you set at the beginning of the year.
It’s super important to continually assess your progress – where in January you had the excitement of the New Year to motivate you, March represents a certain level of comfort – or the feeling of having settled into your year. This comfort however, doesn’t mean you have to lose your sense of excitement and motivation.
So, how to stay on track?
1. Go back to your WHY
When it comes to motivation and staying on track, the reason WHY you want to achieve something is everything. Go back to the reason you set the goal in the first place and have a think about why it is important to you. Is your reasoning still the same?
2. Visualise your Success
You know that feeling when you want something so much that you can almost taste it / touch it? Your brain fixates on what you want so badly that there is literally no other option than getting it because all you can think about how it is going to feel?
This is the emotion you need to have towards your goals. Visualise achieving them, picture how it is going to feel, what you’ll be doing and how you’ll celebrate. Connect with what you want.
3. Look at the Big Picture
It’s easy to berate yourself for not being quite where you wanted to be by March in chasing down your goals, but think big picture. Yearly goals are often a dance. You’ll take steps forward and backwards and the timing of either isn’t always in your control.
Take a figurative step back and see where your progress sits inside the bigger calendar of your year. You might be pleasantly surprised or you might need to step up. Either way, you’ll have an outcome.
4. Stop Procrastinating
We’ve all seen the motivational memes that fly around social media that tell us to “believe and you’ll achieve”. We absolutely agree that you should have belief in your abilities but guess what? You don’t actually need it to get started on your goals.
What you do need is a willingness to just start. Take action, do the work. Just taking a step will give you momentum, but you’ll never achieve anything if you don’t start.
5. Get a Goal Buddy
It’s very easy to dismiss your own disappointment but it’s a lot harder to dismiss the disappointment of someone else. If you don’t already have one, get yourself a goal buddy – someone that is 100% on board with what you want to achieve and will keep you accountable for it.
6. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
In the hunt for any goal you are going to experience failures. Don’t guilt yourself over them. Accept you will fail and figure out how you can use the learnings from your failures to your advantage. Then big back in and start again.