“A problem shared is a problem halved.”

With all the madness of our day to day lives, it’s easy to lose sight of how far we’ve come, and how much further we want to go. We’re always working towards something, whether it’s for our health, career or blogs – there’s always something else we want to achieve. It’s great to want to aim higher, that’s one of the things I love most about this community. We’re always pushing for more. But let me ask you something. These goals that you’ve set yourself, have you shared them with anyone else?

Most of the bloggers I follow share their monthly and yearly goals, and even their goals for income and traffic too. I do the same – it’s a post I always look forward to writing. We share our goals with our community because we want you to know about them. We want you to be achieving your own goals along with us. So today, I’m sharing five reasons why you should share your goals with others, if you haven’t done already.

5 Reasons Why You Need To Share Your Goals With Others

#1 They Can Hold You Accountable

There’s a big difference in having a goal and sharing a goal. If you make it clear to someone that you really want to achieve something, they’ll ask you about it every time this week. My Auntie wants to tone up (even though she doesn’t need to) and she’s really determined to do it. She’s been going to all these exercise classes and eating really healthily. So each week when I see her I always ask how she’s getting on, and she tells me how she's got on.

When someone knows you’re working towards something, it makes you even more determined to achieve it, because you’ll want to tell them how you’re progressing. You’ll want to tell them your results. It’s hard when the only person to disappoint is yourself, but even harder when you bring other people into the picture. Even if you tell just one person who will give you a kick up the bum and give you that extra push to move forward, it’ll be an extra push you need to achieve your goals.

#2 You Can Gain More Clarity

If you pick the right person or people to share your goals with, it’s likely you’ll become much clearer about how you’re going to achieve them and how realistic it’s going to be. If they think you’re going to be pushing yourself too far, they’ll tell you. For instance, if I told my Mum I was going to start my business at the end of August, she’d say there’s no way that could happen. She’s right. But if I said I wanted to start in 6 months, she’d think that was a much more sensible plan.

You’ll also find that your ideas will become clearer. I was worried about sharing my own business goals at first, because they were so jumbled up inside my head. I didn’t have a clear picture of how it was actually going to work. But once I started telling people, they helped me gain clarity on these ideas and even come up with new ones.

You might think that no one will “get” your goals. But they will. You’ve just got to give them a chance.

#3 You’ve Got Someone to Help You

When I told my mum, dad, brother and Tom about how I eventually wanted to become self-employed as a freelance writer and business owner, I was pooing my pants. No one in our family is self-employed – we’ve all gone down the traditional routes of having full-time jobs and sticking to them. Just this week, my Dad and I realised that whilst I’ve had four jobs in my first year of full-time employment, he’s had four throughout his entire life.

But once I told them, do you know what I felt? Relief. Pure relief. Tom thought it was such a good idea that he wants to be part of it. My brother think it’s amazing, my Dad has told me to go for it and my Mum has agreed to be my PA! The people you share your goals with aren’t just there to ask you how you’re getting on. They’re there to help you out and they will, whenever you need it.

#4 You’ll Feel More Motivated

You might think this is the same as accountability, but it’s not. Accountability acts as an incentive for you to achieve your goals. Motivation is getting pumped up and ready to go. It’s the realisation that you’re not doing this alone and yes, you can do what you’ve set out to achieve.

#5 It Improves Your Chances of Reaching Them

Check out these stats from a recent survey – people who just thought about their goals and how to reach them succeeded less than 50% of the time. People who wrote their goals down and enlisted friends to help them by sending regular progress reports succeeded almost 75% of the time. The numbers don’t lie!

Sharing your goals with friends and regularly updating them about your progress really boosts your chances of actually achieving them. It doesn’t matter whether there are stats to back that up or not – there will always be truth behind that statement.

Do you share your goals with others? Will this post make you think differently if you don’t share them?