5 Simple Ways To Actually Stick To Your Goals

I don’t know about you, but I looove the feeling of entering a new season hitting the ground running.  The projects are finished, the meals are prepped, the house is clean; I crave that routine, what about you?

But I know how hard it can be to keep up with alll the things and stack on track towards your goals, especially when life throws curveballs at you. Things pop up, emergencies happen, you get busy and next thing you know, you’re watching life pass you by wondering… did I really make the most out of it?

If you find yourself slipping away from your goals or you’ve been off track for awhile, I want you to know that it’s never too late to hop back on the wagon.

There’s still plenty of time and multiple things you can do to ensure that you follow through on your goals. So without further a-do, let’s dive into these 5 simple tips to stick to and achieve your biggest goals this year!

1 – Define your why

Finding fulfillment in your life starts with understanding WHY you do what you do. You’re “why” is your purpose, your anchor to keep you grounded and moving forward, even when life gets tough.

I know life is hard, and sticking to your goals certainly isn’t easy. But there was a reason you started and held out for so long, right?

So try to tap into that child-like mindset you had in the beginning where you dreamed of a bright future and you were excited just to start, and use it to fuel you.

It’s easy give up after not seeing progress for a few months. Heck, 92% of people never reach their goals.

Do you want to be one of those people? Or do you want to be part of the 8% that hit the ground running, overcame their biggest obstacles, and crossed the finish line with a big grin on their face because they made it.

So I invite you to fight that voice in your mind telling you that you’ll never get there, to show up for yourself at every opportunity and to keep pushing forward. Because if there’s anyone you should fight for, it’s yourself.

2 – Make it simple

If you feel overwhelmed by a big goal in front of you, then what I want you to do is break it down into smaller, more manageable pieces.

The key here is to not focus on your big picture goals, but to look at the next step you need to take. That way you aren’t opening a million tabs in your brain, stressing over all the things you need to do, but you’re putting your blinders on and narrowing your focus down to what you can do today.

Then I want you to write down each action step in your calendar as deadlines.

I literally time block everything on my calendar down to the hour, whether it’s appointments, events, vacations, going out with friends, even “me time.”

This makes your goal more real in your mind and ensures that you’ll actually follow through with it.

Here are more goal setting resources:

• Goal Getter (personal development course)
• How to set goals you’ll actually achieve (blog post)
• How to achieve your biggest goals in life (blog post)
• 11 goal setting mistakes you’re making (blog post)

3 – Create supportive habits

Feel like your habits are working against you? Bad habits form quickly and boy are they hard to get rid of, but no need to worry, creating better habits are completely do able and can even be easy with the right strategy.

Changing your habits start with understanding how habits work. According to Charles Duhigg (who wrote one of my favorite books – The Power of Habit), habits are formed through a three part cycle called The Habit Loop, first there’s the cue, then the routine, and lastly the reward.

Start off by looking at your life and identifying each part of the habit loop that perpetuates your bad habit. What’s your cue (trigger)? What’s your routine? What’s your reward? 

By identifying these elements, we can hijack the habit loop to support the habits we want to create. For example, let’s say that your bad habit is that you binge eat a whole bag of chips every night after a long workday. Your trigger would be the fact that you keep the chips in your cupboard, so you see the cupboard and it triggers you to eat the chips.

Well, in order to change that habit around, you could change your environment and get rid of the trigger by getting rid of the bag of chips in your house.

Identify the triggers, routines, and rewards that fuel your bad habits and come up with ways you can change the cycle. Once you do that, then you can start building good habits that support you as you chase after your goals.

4 – Say no to decisions

Okay, obviously we’re going to always have to make decisions. But the little ones – when should I work out? what should I have for lunch? What should I wear today? – shouldn’t be daily challenges that take a ton of energy figuring out.

Decision fatigue is REAL, my friend. When we’re multi-tasking and trying to make multiple decisions at once, our brain has to constantly re-adjust it’s focus from one to the next which depletes your energy.

But creating systems and planning solutions ahead of time simplifies your life so you can chase after your goals without overwhelm and decision fatigue throwing you off course.

Try implementing some of these into your routine:

• Pick one day out of the week to meal prep a few simple things like cooking chicken, chopping up veggies or making soup. I also like to prep ingredients ahead of time like chopped onions, cooked ground beef, or hard boiled eggs so they’re ready to use in a recipe when I need them.
• Schedule any of your household obligations into your calendar and treat them like you would an obligation with a coworker or boss. For example, maybe Tuesdays are laundry day and Thursdays are for vacuuming. You will feel so much better when you know the exact days you’re doing certain tasks so you aren’t frazzled, stressed out and squeezing in time to get alll the things done.
• Pick out your clothes the night before. This simplifies the dreaded “I don’t know what to wear” that I think all of us say on the regular. You’ll feel so much more refreshed when you have your clothes neatly laid out in front of you instead of trying to salvage that last piece of clean clothing crammed in the back of your closet.

5 – Build resilience

Just a fair warning: Anything worth doing will always be met with roadblocks. Whether it’s the daily demands of life, limiting beliefs you have, or critics telling you you’re not good enough, there will always be something that’ll try to derail you.

First you must ask yourself – what limiting beliefs or issues do I have to deal with? Some are going to be more obvious than others, but recognizing what’s holding you back so it doesn’t throw you off track is so important.

Then, if you can, try to prepare for those obstacles well ahead of time. Some you can foresee, while others will happen in the moment, but think about what you can start working on today so you’re prepared. There are many mindset blocks that hold us back on a daily basis, so this would be a great place to start.

Digging goals and sticking to them is no easy feat, so stay the course, make sure your vision and your “why” are strong enough for you to follow through, and play those scenes in your head when you feel like you’re at the end of your rope.

When you can see that end goal so vividly and you know the exact steps you need to take in order to reach it, it’ll ensure that you’re always headed in the right direction and that you build the resilience necessary to overcome anything standing in your way.

Final Thoughts

What I want for you is to find your groove, achieve your biggest goals and feel proud of yourself. It’s a tug of war, and some days you may find yourself on the losing side, dragging yourself through the mud and wishing that you hadn’t gone so far off course.

So whenever you have those days, I want you to remember that no matter how far you’ve fallen off track, it’s never too late to get back on, and any progress made is a step forward no matter how small.

I think it’s easy for us to press these small wins against the bigger picture and feel like we’re not really getting anywhere. But no matter what progress you made, it’s still progress, it’s still a step in the right direction and should be celebrated!

So, keep marching on and dig those BIG goals, you goal getter, you!