Want an easy goal setting challenge that will change your life?
Goal setting challenges come in all shapes and sizes. The focus of this one – is to show how easy they can be. But, I also want to show you – how life-changing they can be.
The key to a goal setting challenge is to get the ball rolling. Or, to say it another way – to create self-efficacy. In a nutshell. This is the process of gathering momentum in your goal journey – by proving to yourself you can achieve what you want. Research has shown this will contribute to the likelihood you will achieve your goals.
So, rather than setting yourself big goals that you plan to achieve in the future. Utilise self-efficacy by chunking down your goals and start getting things done today.
Let’s get started!
Choose a goal that you want to achieve over the next 6 weeks.
(Need a hand picking a goal? Check out this wellness wheel activity)
The goal setting challenge
For this challenge, I recommending a 6-week timeframe. This will give you lots of time to achieve your desired goal.
(Note – you can apply these principles to whatever timeframe you want.)
The first step is to chunk your 6-week goal into smaller action items that you can complete over the 6-week period.
Besides the advantage of creating self-efficacy. Chunking your goals into smaller actions will also help you to keep yourself positive, motivated and on track.
(Plus – even if you leave things to the last minute – you only have to catch up on a small chunk of action.)
To make life easier for you. I am sharing my quick 6-week goal setting template with you (see above).
This template chunks the 6-week goal into 7 milestones.
This will help get you started today (which will give your a positive brain boost to kick things off) and has an action/milestone at the end of every week.
Remember, each week’s milestone can be small. The focus is not how much you achieve but the fact that you are continually achieving.
(Note – For those of you that are serious about their goal setting methods. It is good practice to have every milestone as a SMART goal. But I tend to go easy on myself method-wise if I am tracking myself on a weekly basis.)
How a 6-week goal setting challenge transformed my life
Backstory
In the not too distant past – two people asked me to name something I loved about myself.
One was my good friend Adriene from “Yoga with Adriene” on Youtube (I assume we are good friends because we hang out most days on the yoga mat). The other was a website trying to sell me stuff.
The former assumed that it might take a moment to find something – the latter assumed I had something locked and loaded ready to go.
What this made me realise was – I can’t do it. I find myself being able to love relationships and choices – but not something that results in a flat-out compliment about myself.
It reminds me of a coaching session I once had where the coach asked me to name something about myself I was proud of. Just thinking about things that I am proud of makes me feel uncomfortable.
So, my question to myself was this:
Why can’t I name something that I love about myself?
What’s that you say? Yes, I agree with you.
This would make a perfect area to exercise a bit of personal growth.
So, as a result, I set myself a 6-week goal challenge.
(This had the added advantage of building a tool that I could share with you too. That’s right – everyone wins.)
My 6-week goal setting challenge: Name one thing that I love about myself.
My Results
Interesting discovery #1
Following on from my 6 weeks of journaling and chatting I can tell you:
I love that I am proactive and try and make things better when they are getting me down.
Interesting discovery #2
This process of self-reflection uncovered something more important for me.
The discovery that I only accept praise and recognition from people if I agree with what they are saying, ie. their comments relate to something above the personal achievement benchmark I hold myself to.
As a result, I rarely accept compliments and believe people’s positive feedback.
I also realised that I hold myself to a different achievement benchmark than I do everyone else.
Interesting discovery #3
Now, through this exercise, there was one thing that I kept coming back to:
Does it really matter if I can’t name something I love about myself?
Because it feels silly, unnatural and unnecessary. I continuously wondered – what is the value in it? Why do people ask me this question?
After some vigorous journaling – I believe there is a link between:
- Appreciating myself
- Naming things I love about myself
- Lowering my personal judging benchmark
- Feelings of self-worth
- Being comfortable with vulnerably and connection
- Not caring what people think about me
At first, this does seem strange to me because I am not unhappy with myself generally. But, I can appreciate how my inability to get all gooey with loving feelings for myself would be indicative of deeper issues. And I can see how these issues would naturally link to my problems with vulnerability & sharing (hangovers).
So – a new personal growth journey starts here.
Why have I shared (slash overshared) this personal detail with you?
I have taken you on this personal journey because I wanted to demonstrate how much I got from a 6-week goal challenge, which was essentially:
- 3 journal entries &
- 2 chats
And as a result, I feel motivated, informed and positive about a new direction in my personal growth. So, now:
I want to implore you to do a personal goal setting challenge – so you can have a big payoff from your bite-sized goals.
(Then pop a comment below – because I would love to know how you went!)
[Article First Published: September 12, 2020.]
(Photo by Christopher Beloch on Unsplash)
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