The Coach Approach

Getting Started on Your Goals

We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence then, is not an act but a habit.

~Aristotle

There are two ways to get started on your goals or take up the charge again once you are off track.  The easy way and the hard way. 

You know the hard way - making huge sacrifices, trying to swallow big changes in one giant bite, trying to overhaul your whole life or career all at one time.  Its a good strategy when you are facing an immediate crisis.  Think of people who wait to change their lifestyle until they have had a heart attack or the executive who hires a coach AFTER he loses all of his top people.  The hard way can work AND it takes a monstrous amount of energy and discipline. 

Nothing against the hard way.  I've done it many times myself.  I ran up a good amount of credit card debt in my twenties and didn't get it under control until the government came in and took 25% of my paycheck for back taxes.  I always had the choice of paying it off a little at a time but, I didn't make that choice.  That was then and this is now.  Now, I prefer the easy way.

The easy way is to make incremental changes or improvements.  There is a great article on the process called kaizen over at Zen Habits posted by guest author, Mary Jaksch.  Habits are the foundation to achieving goals.  Mary makes two really good points -

• "If we change direction little by little, we can use momentum to affect change."

• "With a strategy of continuous low-level change, we are able to sidestep the number one barrier to change: fear."

The kaizen method, the easy way, is more sustainable in the long run while the grit and bear it approach can bring about more immediate change.  Ultimately, it is a personal choice and based on your circumstances, personal strengths and weaknesses and the nature and urgency of your goals.

What steps will you choose today?  I'm sticking with tiny steps in the right direction - for now.

To your success,

Lora

What Areas of Your Life Need Fresh Goals?

When setting goals, you want to consider all areas of your life.  Its no good to achieve extreme success in your work if it costs you your health or your family.  Its no good to be a superstar parent if it costs your fitness and personal relationships.  There needs to be a balance so you can lead a rich, full life and achieve your goals with all parts working together for success.

One of my favorite success coaches, Jack Canfield, author of the Chicken Soup for the Soulbook series, recommends setting goals in the following areas:

Three Simple Tips to Help You Achieve Your Goals

The research is in and these three simple steps will improve the likelihood of achieving the goals you set for yourself. 

1.  Write them down.  Yes, it is that simple.  Write down every goal you have for every aspect of your life along with your target date.  Better if you write down your specific action steps but if nothing else, write your goals down.

2.  Make a public commitment.  You don't need to run a newspaper ad but certainly, tell a friend, a trusted adviser, spouse, or friends about the goals that are important to you.  This allows others in your inner circle to become allies in your progress toward your goal and to notice where they can support you.  It also creates a little self-imposed pressure on you to do what needs to be done to achieve your goals.

3.  Create accountability.  Some times, it is easy to let yourself down, rationalize, or give yourself too much wiggle room to fail.  So, find an accountability partner.  This can be a mentor, significant other, coach, or a master mind group.  The idea is to go on record with someone else not only about your goal but about your specific action steps.  What will you do?  When will you do it?  And how will your accountability partner know?  Then report in on your progress.  I check in with my clients at the beginning of every coaching call and also by email.  There is also a courageous (and very public!) trend around for people to declare their goals on blogs and to report on their progress to anyone who will read about it.  Check it out.  You'll see people reporting on training for marathons, losing weight, changing eating habits, finding work they love and improving work/life balance.

These three steps are simple, simple, simple! Why not use them?

To your success,

Lora

Lora Banks, PCC, CPCC

Certified Professional Coach

lora@TheCoachApproach.net

www.TheCoachApproach.net

Achieving Your Goals by Setting "Actionable" Steps

Anyone who has set and failed at a New Year's resolution (that would be just about all of us!), knows that some times our goals seem too far off in the distant or too big to achieve, so we give up.  We quit.  We fail.  And our well thought out, well intentioned goal ends up back in the land of pipe dreams rather than as a satisfying outcome to our efforts.

The trick is to take the goal and work backwards into ACTIONABLE steps. 

You Can Do Just About Anything That Someone Else Can Do

If someone else can do it, chances are - so can you.  The trick is to find someone who is doing, being, or achieving what you wish to accomplish and then model their behavior. 

Success coaches in the not too distant past used to recommend finding a mentor or someone accomplished in your field to guide you on your path.  That is still a good strategy but the really great news is with the information technology available today, you can learn the behaviors behind almost any kind of success.

The behaviors behind great success stories like Michael Jordan, Oprah, Steve Jobs, and Jack Welch are at your fingertips as well as in the book store.  All are worth studying because there are underlying themes that are useful in pursuit of any goal. 

You can also look for models in your own environment.  Want to be more fit?  Who do you know that is balancing a busy schedule like you and managing to stay fit?  How are they doing it?  Want to be more patient with your children?  Who in your environment is demonstrating this behavior for you that you can emulate?  What SPECIFICALLY are they doing when faced with a challenging situation?

If you can find someone achieving the goals you have set for yourself, you have discovered a road map to the goal for yourself.  Reaching the destination is MUCH easier with that map.  Use it! 

Improve Your Opportunities for Success with Laser-like Focus on Your Goals

You've thought about your goals.  You're clear why you want what you want and what it will get for you.  And, you've visualized achieving your goals in rich sensory detail.  Now what?

Get them out of your head and on to the paper or somewhere else where you can see them and review them regularly.  Why?  Two reasons, commitment and focus.

It is an urban myth that the 3% of Harvard graduates in 1953 who wrote down their goals earned 10 times more money than the rest of the class over a 20 year period.  However, a more recent study by Gail Matthews at Dominican University arrives at a similar conclusion.  And, according to Harvard success scientist, Dr. Stephen Kraus,

    "There’s a power to the simple act of putting something in writing.  It enhances commitment, maximizes motivation, and diminishes the wiggle room that opens the door to revisionist personal histories (e.g., not putting forth your best effort, but rationalizing it as “I never really set that goal, anyway”). "

Save Time and Energy by Visualizing Your Goals

Visualizing your goals is not simply day dreaming or wasting time.� It is a well-documented tactic for accelerating progress toward your goals and improving performance.

The Science.� In the 1980's, Dr. Denis Waitley discovered in working with the astronauts at NASA that your brain does not tell the difference between a real and an imagined experience.� Through a process called "visual motor rehearsal" at that time and using sophisticated biofeedback machinery, he discovered that when you visualize an event, your brain produces the same pattern of impulses and sends instructions to your biological systems just as if you were doing the event.

The Facts.� Dr. Waitley went on to use this process to improve the performance of Olympic athletes.�Surgeons, successful business people, and elite athletes, such as Michael Jordan, have reported using visualization techniques to reach their goals. Virtually every team at the Beijing Olympics will be employing the services of multiple sports psychologists to continue training these athletes to visualize their success among other things.

Program Your Brain to Help You Achieve Your Goals

Yes, you can program your brain to help you achieve your goals.

This concept was originally referred to as "Psycho-Cybernetics" in the 1960's book�by Dr. Maxwell Maltz of the same name.� According to Maltz and others who have built on his ideas since his death, your brain functions a bit like a machine, creating habits and behaviors that are consistent with the programming it receives from your thoughts.�

To achieve your goals, you need to provide a very specific target to your brain to harness this power of psycho-cybernetics.� The brain will then filter through the millions of bits of data passing through your neural pathways on a daily basis to find what is useful and supportive in reaching your target.� It will notice when you are off track, register the feedback and help you adjust your direction - like a guided missile according to Maltz!

To program your brain, follow these guidelines for setting a clearly defined target.

Six Questions That Will Make Your Goals More Achievable

This month, August, is going to be all about setting goals.  Setting goals for yourself, your team, and those you coach.  I'll be writing about how to construct goals, set up accountability systems, and focus in a way that improves the ability to achieve them.

For those of you wondering why August?  The answer is simple.  Like myself, most of my clients are parents with school age children.  There is a natural shift in September when the kids return to school.  There is a change in schedules and a move away from recreation time and toward a time of greater effort and productivity.  August is a good time to prepare for an end of year push toward those key goals.

The place to start, and this is simple but oftentimes not easy, is to check in with yourself about what you really want and to understand the intention or need behind your objective.

DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP!  It is the foundation to creating well formed and achievable outcomes and will save you time and frustration later!

Before committing to your goals ask yourself these questions:

1. What is my intention behind this goal?
2. What do I want? I mean really, really, really want.
3. What will achieving this goal do for me?
4. What will achieving this goal do for others?
5. What's important to me about this goal?
6. When I achieve this goal, what will be different?

 

No kidding, time spent reflecting and exploring your motives behind your goals will be invaluable later on.  As you stretch yourself and face new challenges, you will always have, very clear in your mind, WHY this is important to you and WHAT you can expect when you achieve it.

I'd love to hear more goal setting strategies and if you are blogging about this topic somewhere else, please let me know so I can link to your articles.

To your success,

Lora

Lora Banks, CPCC, PCC

Certified Professional Coach

lora@TheCoachApproach.net

www.TheCoachApproach.net