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Tips on Reflection & Goal Setting for 2012

image: http://www.nawic.com.au

Happy Friday! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! in advance! 😉

Well I touched on this a bit in one of my posts earlier this week. That is, goal setting and New Year resolutions. I mentioned the Mind Tools website which is really helpful when you are looking at goal setting but also a heap of other stuff (Mind Tools has a lot of business stuff and organisational psychology stuff too! Please note I have no affiliation with the site, I’m simply mentioning it because I use it and I like it!).

Anyway, I was cleaning out my emails at work and came across one that I’d saved. I’m not sure who the original author of these tips is, as it was forwarded to me, but here they are. (If anyone knows who the original author is, let me know! I’m going to use these questions to prompt some of my own reflections – I hope that they are as helpful for you as I think they will be for me! (As I’d saved the email but not used it last year – naughty me!) I have paraphrased the tips below in purple…

***

In 2011 –

• What were my 3 greatest achievements?
• What 3 things have I learnt about myself?
• Was I in control of my personal life?
• Was I in control of my professional life?
• What can I change in these areas for 2012?
• Was my life balanced? What can I do about this in 2012?
• Did I gain new knowledge? What do I want to learn in 2012?

For 2012 –

• What are my 3 health related goals?
• What are my 3 professional goals?
• What are my 3 goals for my personal life?
• What is an unhelpful habit that I need to break or replace?
• What new and helpful habit could I introduce?

***

Gee they like the number 3 don’t they? You could choose whatever number of goals you like, 1 or 100! However with goal setting it’s typically better if you have a few rather than too many goals, as then your focus isn’t spread all over the place and it’s easier to acheive your goals.

Make sure your goals are “SMART” – that is, Specific, Measurable (i.e. how will you know that you have made progress towards and/or have achieved your goal), Attainable (if the goal is too huge, break it down into smaller parts that are easier to tackle), Realistic, and Time Oriented (i.e. you need to have a time frame in which you will acheive the goal and/or steps along the way. For example, if your goal for 2012 is to lose 10kg, you may say that you are aiming to lose 1kg a month.)

I wish you all the best for 2012! Go out on a limb and set yourself some goals for the new year – this will help you to maintain focus and achieve what you want to in 2012.

Sarah

PS. If you’d like to read more about this sort of thing, including personal development, let me know and I will post more on it. Positive psychology is one of my interests! 🙂