How To Stay Motivated With Your Business Goals For 2020
Finally, the end is in sight for January blues. But with the novelty of the shiny new year starting to wear off, it’s easy and certainly tempting to let those promising, determined goals you set for 2020 slip away. Before you know it another year has passed and you’ve not made the progress you’d hoped for within your business.
So let’s make 2020 different. Let’s make 2020 the year you commit to your business goals, stay laser-focused, driven and keep motivation consistent to see your goals through to their final manifestation.
Not sure how? Keep these tips and tricks in your back pocket, ready for a rainy day when reaching your goals seems more impossible than ever.
Understand the significance of your goals
When you think about your vision for your business one year from now, what do you see? How has your business grown? How has it changed? What does it look like? Perhaps more importantly, how do you feel running it?
When setting goals it’s easy to overcommit and even easier to pursue certain goals because you think you should. However, to ensure motivation sticks by you, you’ve got to start with understanding why you’ve chosen certain goals to pursue.
Ask yourself how you’ll know you’ve been successful in achieving your goals? What will that look like? How will you feel? What will that do for you and your business?
In understanding the depth behind your goal, you’re attaching an emotional connection to it, increasing the likelihood of your achieving it.
Create a roadmap
Imagine you decided to take a cross-country road trip. You decided on your destination but didn’t look into the route or the directions to take you there. Chances are, the trip would be chaos. It would be stressful and it’s likely you would get totally lost along the way. You may even give up completely, turn the car around and go back to where you started, annoyed and frustrated.
Now imagine if you took the same approach and applied it to running your business and progressing with your goals to grow that business.
Once the end goal is clear, it’s time to start working on the route that’s going to get you there. Work backwards from the vision and outcome and lay out the steps necessary to complete it. Know that the roadmap will likely not be linear - it never is with entrepreneurship - and that there will likely be obstacles in the way. When plotting out your step by step process to reach the goal, brainstorm potential obstacles that may crop up and interfere with your progress. Prepare for these by thinking about potential solutions. While these obstacles may present detours, don’t let them become roadblocks. Consider your options, refocus and get back to the roadmap of reaching your goals.
Celebrate the small wins
When it comes to setting big goals, the pattern is usually as follows;
Upon setting the goal you’re excited, you’re fired up, you’re determined to make it happen.
Once you’ve achieved the goal, you’re excited, you’re fired up, you’re determined to make even bigger things happen.
But the journey in between, the part where you’re working hard, pushed to your limit, holding on to that big picture vision, following your roadmap but yet to see the payoff? Yeah, let’s not pretend that’s not frustrating and at times, totally demotivating.
Instead while navigating that roadmap to your destination goal, take time to celebrate the small wins. Research shows that taking time to celebrate the small wins along the way is self-motivating. In doing so you’re acknowledging the headway you’re making on your goals, meaning you’re more likely to increase your efforts, work harder and work faster to achieve your goals.
Lastly, for those yet to identify their business goals for 2020, take some time to think about the following questions.
What’s one big professional goal that you want to accomplish by the end of the year?
Does the thought of achieving this goal excite you? Does the work necessary to achieve this goal excite you?
What is motivating you to achieve this goal?
Now make it happen.
