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It’s always a great time to focus on our goals and take steps to achieve them, but sometimes motivation dips. I’ll cover exactly how to create aligned goals and how to take action when energy slips.

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There are two camps when it comes to goal setting:

People either love setting new goals OR the thought of it stresses them out.

Either way, these people have one thing in common - motivation isn’t always there.

Have you ever gotten to the point where for some of your goals, you’ve lost your motivation? Your heart just doesn’t feel in it anymore?

I definitely have. You’re not alone.

Let me walk you through some driving forces you do have control over to help you get your motivation and mojo back behind your goals for the rest of 2023.

How to break down your goals

I think the very first step, when you are feeling a little bit unsure about what your new year goals should be, is to really take a step back and break it down.

As creatives we usually have a million ideas floating around and it can feel really hard to choose a few main goals or priorities. Or you might even be sitting there with a completely blank mind or unsure of where to go next.

To make sure that you have the bandwidth to actually accomplish your goals, and make sure you don't end up completely oversaturating yourself with possibilities, I suggest only having a small handful of goals and breaking these down into actionable steps.

So there's a little bit of a process to this that I want to share with you for this and I've got a few ultimate suggestions as well.

The first step in this whole process is to choose three main areas in your business that you really want to work on. For example, maybe your three areas could be social media, team, and income. Simple.
With the three areas you want to focus on, I then suggest setting two to three goals within each category. So specific things that you can measure and know that you have completed them. For example, with social media growth example maybe you want to reach 10,000 followers on your Instagram account. For team, you might want to hire your first team member. For income, maybe you want to reach £3k months consistently. So those are the specific measurable goals that would then fit underneath these broader categories.
It’s then time to set action items as to how you are going to achieve each of these goals. I always suggest creating action-based goals rather than results-based goals. For example, if you are trying to hit a social media metric goal, the action item that you're actually going to need to do would be something like posting consistently being intentional about your target audience, following trends etc. Instead of making the result-based goal of hitting 10k on Instagram, the goal is to post five high-quality posts per week on Instagram. This way you can reframe it into something you can take action on every single day, week, month, year etc.

let’s talk about motivation

Tell me honestly, have you ever gotten to the point where for some of your goals, you've lost all motivation?

I have, I am holding my hands up right now.

I'm going to talk about what you can do to get that motivation back. Because if we aren't excited about our goals, it's lifting. Don’t worry, I am going to help you get your mojo back.

the driving forces

There are some driving forces that you need to work on to get your motivation back up for your goals.

The drive

The drive behind your goal is a big one and it’s usually about who and/or what.

The drive behind our goals needs to be embedded or baked into the initial goal; if it isn’t we might need to do to adjust it.

Sometimes I have found myself working on a goal and I lose interest, so I dive deeper into it and ask myself:

Okay, why am I even doing this goal?
Where's my why?
What's my driving force?

The answers usually start with the phrase: ‘Well, I should…”

These are should goals. For instance, ‘I should eat healthier’, ‘I should do that routine because X does that routine’

People are looking for formulas that other people have done to find success, and then just mimic those tactics. We see this all the time with people's finances, or with their lifestyle choices or their work choices and the trouble with this is if the driving force behind your goal is outside of yourself or if it's a should driver, that motivation is going to be hard to sustain. We can lose our motivation because it's not embedded in something internally.

Pay attention to what matters truly to you when setting your goals, or perhaps reframing a goal that you currently have.

The benefits

The next driving force is the benefits. This is as simple as asking ‘What's in it for me?’ What in accomplishing this goal will benefit me, or the people I care about?

The goal might feel like a grind right now, but when you reflect on the benefit of doing that, over the course of time, you can rediscover your motivation.

A thing I like to do is time travelling through journalling, which I do every single morning - it’s called a scripting practice. I put myself in a virtual scenario where I'd already accomplished my goal. I ask myself: what's the scene? What does it feel like? What are the surroundings? How do I feel?

Really try to paint the picture in your mind, and familiarise yourself with the benefits of achieving the goal.

The cost

The third force is the cost. In other words, what is at stake if you do not reach your goal?

This is a big deal. It's almost the flip side of the benefits force - we think about the benefits, this is the cost. What will you lose? What will you miss out on?

For example, if there is an opportunity that's available but you don’t go for it, you have to willingly choose not to go after that opportunity and therefore that is counted as a loss. That’s the cost.

I think this driving force becomes more effective when you think about different life areas.

For example,

The goal: earning a certain amount this year, or saving a certain amount this year.
We might think the cost of not achieving this goal is not having that much money. But if we dig deeper and reflect laterally, we can think: How does that affect my marriage? Maybe it will involve some uncomfortable conversations or it means you don't get to treat yourselves or go on holiday.
Think about it emotionally, how is that going to feel for you and your own sense of progress in my life?
Think physically. If you did hit that goal maybe you would start paying to have a massage once a month or see a nutritionist, which you probably won't be able to do if you don't hit this financial goal.
Think about the second and third-order consequences. For example, how does feeling annoyed and overwhelmed each day affect your life and your family? What does that look like in the long term?

Reflecting in this way inflates the cost of missing the goal and channels more motivation to get the goal done. Keep asking yourself: ‘But why? But why? But why?’ and think across all areas.

the recap

The good news is that you don't have to lose steam with your goals. You can refresh the motivation behind your goals by reflecting on why you are working to achieve them, what's driving them, the benefits of achieving them, and the cost if you don't.

You’ve got this and I’m here for you every step of the way!