Defining Goals that Align with Your Values

Setting unrealistic goals

To share a personal example, a few years back, I made a decision to stop eating foods with added sugar.

There was just one problem. I was setting myself up for failure. While I had lots of discipline and optimism, all I did was think about chocolate and I ended up feeling like a failure when I caved and ate some chocolate. The takeaway: to achieve a goal, you need to feel somewhat confident that you can reach it.

Managing change successfully means that you need to recognize who can help lead change in your organization. You need constancy and reliability in your leaders (when everything else is changing around you). You also need to involve your employees and other stakeholders in the process as early as possible; engaging them in the change will help you move forward. Keep your focus on the action plan and handle problems using decision making and problem-solving Having a long-term goal without a short term plan

There is no reason why I could not have limited foods with added sugars, but I went about it the wrong way. If I’d come up with a very specific plan, I could have achieved it. l just needed to reassess my goal so I felt confident about my ability to achieve it.

When you are setting a long—term goal, the focus is on what I refer to as the “Big Picture”. And that’s what I ask of my coaching clients. But to achieve that really big goal, you need to have smaller, manageable goals along the way.

Reworking goals in this way makes even the biggest goal manageable. As you achieve success along the way, you build your confidence and this makes it easier to stay focused and continue with that forward momentum.

Trying to do it all

No matter how much you pride yourself on your multi-tasking skills, research shows your brain can only focus on one big thing at a time.

This is the same problem with having too many goals. Think about when you decided you wanted to lose weight. You probably made big plans to get to the gym, eat smaller portions and go to bed earlier in that first week. We all know how that worked out!

A better approach is to set fewer, smaller goals more frequently. I like to set weekly goals. This practice allows you to minimize competing priorities, which can squash your chances for success.

When you think about what you need to do to reach your big goal, it can cause some anxiety if you don’t chunk it down. If you tackle your big goal over 30, 60 or 90 days instead of 365, your odds of achieving it are much greater.

Failing to recognize progress

How often do you take time out to reflect on and recognize everything you’ve accomplished?

Your subconscious mind stores all of your experiences, and it makes you feel uncomfortable whenever you attempt to do anything new or different from what you’ve done before. That’s why building new habits is difficult. Your subconscious mind’s job is to protect you, so it wants to keep you right where you are and that won’t get you closer to your goals. By rewarding yourself, you reinforce those new behaviors and this helps retrain your brain to be more successful.

Your goal is not supported enough

You are more likely to succeed at your goals if you have someone serving as your coach, cheerleader, or mentor. Ask friends, family, and co~workers for their support and to hold you accountable as you work toward your goals. Revisit your goals at regular intervals to make sure you are on track and to re-energize your efforts.

So if you want to set goals that actually stick, make sure your goals are realistic, time-specific, and bite-size and do not forget to give yourself credit for all of your hard work techniques. The reason for change must be valid; change can cause stress and upheaval for the people involved in the process.

When you need to manage change, you need to focus on doing it right rather than doing it fast. The culture of your organization will need to adapt, along with the functions, processes, and people. Work on building awareness, understanding, acceptance, and commitment to and for the change.

The word “values” has become a buzz word. But what are your values, have you ever stopped to ask yourself? Your values come from a variety of different sources, your parents, friends, work colleagues, teachers, even where you attend schooling or extracurricular activities. As people grow in years their values tend to, whether they realize it or not, become more defined. Too many people are leading lives unconnected to their values, and may not even truly be aware of what their values are.

To define your values is not always an easy task. To begin with there are many definitions of what values might be. As stated the word “values” has become a buzzword, meaning it has been used over and over so many times that its meaning has been altered or degraded. The idea of values can also be hard to define because they will be different for every individual, or group. Here may be some bases for a few different types of values:

Personal values could be thought of as strong desires that cause someone to act in order to gain or keep something that enhances them as an individual.

Family values may be thought of as strong desires reflecting the common commitment by the members to achieve rules, traditions, secrets, loyalty, etc.

Core values may be thought of as those on which all other values rest. Where personal values are linked to what an individual desires, core values are felt strongly enough to stand by no matter what they may get.

Your core values guide your moment-to-moment thoughts and actions, whether you recognize it or not. Align your personal values with what you do and you will find more fulfillment than if you act in contradiction of them. Once you have begun to discover what you believe your core values are, try to clarify them and even match them with projects or goals you are currently working on. if you have hit a roadblock on certain projects or goals perhaps it is because they do not align with your core values. Expressing your values in what you do is about knowing yourself, and believing in what you are doing.

How to List personal Values?

Your personal values can be in many different areas: your values in life, work, family…

The best place to start to list personal values for you is to look at your values in life, you can look at other, more specific areas later on. Examples of life values are things like: honesty, integrity, family, freedom.

You have already seen that the definition of personal core values is simple but discovering your personal values is much harder.

It is so easy to confuse values with other things like beliefs. It is also very common to feel you should value something as a result of pressure from your parents and your friends when in fact it is just not a value for you.

The key is to remember that you define personal values as the things that are important to you.

So just sit down quietly with a piece of paper and repeatedly ask yourself the question:
“What is really important about life for me?”

Just keep asking and answering as honestly as you can — don’t answer as you think you ought to Write down your answers.

Once you have written down your answers then you can try a second exercise:
Think back to a time when you were really motivated to do something, anything go on a journey somewhere, propose to your spouse, help someone who was in difficulty, climb a mountain.

Think back into that time, imagine where you were and how you felt as you became motivated until you can discover the feeling you had at the moment you were motivated – maybe it was a desire to discover something new, love for your future spouse.

That initial emotion is almost certainly one of your core values. Write it down.

Go through these two exercises a few times until you have 10 — 20 values written down. Then look at them carefully. Are these really your personal values, do they represent who you really are?

Now compare them with each other, ask yourself “is this value more important to me than that value”. By doing this you will be able to arrange them into an order of importance. Do your personal values align with your path to success? Now you’ll know both what is really important to you in life and where your priorities are! This puts you streets ahead of anyone who has never taken the time to do this exerciser)

Finally ask yourself, “Am I living my life according to my values and priorities?”
If you answer “no”, you need to work out what you are going to do to make sure you are living congruently?