10 Practical Tips on How to Smash your 2020 Goals

Did you know a staggering 75 to 85 percent of people who set goals don’t achieve them? So, it’s no surprise that this time of year a lot of people are struggling with New Year’s resolutions and are ready to call it quits and give up already! But before you decide to throw in the towel, check out our 10 practical tips to help you smash your goals in 2020!

1 - Plan with passion

Before setting your goals for the year take some time to reflect on what you truly want to achieve, where your desires are, and what drives you. Ask yourself if you are actually really passionate about your goals, do you crave the outcome, are you motivated and hungry enough to do whatever it takes to smash them? Remember anyone can set a goal but you can only smash it with hard work and a true passion.

2 - No more than four

When setting your goals use restraint and hold back on your newly found 2020 enthusiasm and set no more than 3 or 4 goals for the year. It is easy to get carried away at the start of a new year and create a long list of goals, but don’t! If you set any more than 3 to 4 goals, you won’t have the time you need to truly focus on them and won’t be able to actually achieve them. Think of each goal as a ball, how many can you juggle before dropping the ball?

3 - Prioritise your goals

Let’s be honest, you can’t help yourself and you’ve snuck in a few extra goals for the year and have over four aspirations for 2020. It’s amazing to dream big but be realistic and ask yourself if you could only achieve one goal what one would it be? Doing this will force you to prioritise your goals so you know what is vital to you. Number all your goals by importance, so that when you are under the pump and time-poor you will be able to quickly decide which goal to focus on. Your future self will thank you for it!

4 - Measure and reflect

When setting your goals think about how you will measure your success. If your goal is to be fit, healthy, and happy how will you know when you have achieved this? Refrain from setting a weight number as a goal as this won’t actually reflect your fitness, health, or happiness… someone who weighs 60kgs or less might not be healthy and probably isn’t happy especially if they’re calorie counting! If you are unsure of how to measure your goal use a simple 1 to 10 scale and check in every week to see where you sit.

5 - Break it down

Don’t get overwhelmed with how big a goal is and lose motivation because it is intimidating. Break your goal down into smaller more manageable tasks. This will help you work out the process on how to achieve your goal. For example, if you have a big goal like writing a book it can seem quite daunting as writing a book is kind of a big deal! But if you break this down into smaller chucks like writing a chapter every fortnight then the task doesn’t seem so huge. Remember you can only eat an elephant one bite at a time.

6 - Daily reminders

Display your goal throughout your home so that you are constantly reminded of what you are trying to achieve. This will help you visualise the outcome and reinforce your purpose and drive while you work to smash your goal. Have your goals in places like the bathroom mirror, the fridge, next to the toilet, or wherever you will stop to read it.

7 - Build on habits

A goal can only, and I mean only, be achieved with frequent and consistent action. But the tricky part is how to make these actions a habit? If your goal for the year is to be fit, healthy and happy there are lots of habits you could do to achieve this like drink more water, eat less junk, get more sleep, exercise daily and on and on. If you chose to do all these things at once, it’s likely that after a few days or a week you will find it is too hard and give up. Instead, if you focus on just one or two actions, this will allow you to set a routine and increase your chances of turning the action into a new habit. Once you’ve established the habit move on to build the next.

8 - Plan every day

Spend 5-10 minutes every day thinking about what action you will do that day to move forward in your goal. The action simply needs to help you make progress and move forward, it should not be complex or try to achieve the overall goal in one action. Write the task down and actually action it, remember a goal can only be achieved with frequent and consistent action. This is a great habit to form and should be part of your daily routine.

9 - Be accountable

Let’s be honest there will be some days (hopefully not many) where you will achieve buggar all and won’t progress forward. It is important that you hold yourself accountable for this and ask the question why? By asking why you may identify that you are pushing yourself too much and need to schedule some downtime for yourself, or you might work out that your routine doesn’t work, or that your goal is not realistic, or that your plan of attack needs to be rejigged. Holding yourself accountable will allow you to work out how to overcome obstacles and move forward.

10 - Celebrate the wins

Don’t forget to celebrate your wins even the small ones! Doing this will help build your motivation and spur you on. Everyone likes to celebrate with a party but avoid the pity parties and avoid getting caught up on the things you didn’t win, simply reflect on these and what you need to do to move forward in your goal. Beating yourself up because you haven’t achieved what you wanted won’t get you any closer to smashing your goal so don’t waste your time doing it.