3 Proven Strategies to Set Life-Changing Goals

Welcome back to Week 4 of the Feel Less Busy Series.

Last week, I shared with you my tips for moving your body. This week, let’s talk about proven strategies to set goals.

If you’d like to revisit posts in the Feel Less Busy series, click here to explore ideas and tricks to make the most of your precious and plentiful time. I’m sure you’ll find something that you can try!

Do you ever dream of being off the clock? You know what I mean. No errands to run. No tasks to check off the list. No carpooling, dinner to cook, homework to check. Why is it that busyness seems to be a badge of honor?

Well, my friends, I’m here to help.

Making enough time in my day is something I love to do. I secretly get a buzz when people wonder how I live the life of an executive with three kids, travel the world, and still take a vacation and do what I love (reading and writing).

I believe that you can have the life you want. Feel calm. Get more done. Achieve time freedom.

Week 4: Set Goals

Whether you find joy in the journey or reach the destination, goals are a fantastic way to keep on track. And since part of feeling less busy is to live the life that brings you happiness, achieving your goals can be incredibly motivating.

You can see the difference you’re making.

The achievements that are happening.

The habits that are forming.

And stacking one win on top of another leads to even more results.

And here’s the real secret. When you start achieving your goals, you realize that anything you dream of really is possible. Right now, you might think this sounds a bit crazy. If you’d like to hear more about how I use an abundance mindset to achieve my goals and live a joyful life, jump on over to this post. Believe me when I tell you that creating an abundance mindset helps you to:

• Be happy, even in situations where others might not be.
• Feel like there is plenty (of anything) to go around – love, money, friendship, opportunities.
• Live a joyful and unlimited life.
• Create meaningful experiences that bring a smile to your face.
• Easily have relationships that energize and inspire you.
• Achieve what you desire, and be excited about challenges and growth.

Strategies to Help Set Goals

There are different ways to think about goal setting. But here’s how I think about it. You need to have only a few goals to work on. Now, sure, the goal can include some sub-goals or actions. For instance, I have a health goal (that I write down every day in my journal) that is:

I am a size 2, with a healthy body and mind.

You’ve probably noticed that I write this goal down as though I have already achieved it. The reason I write it like this is that I am encoding my brain to build motivational beliefs. And because I’m writing it down every day, I think about the actions and habits I need to take to achieve it. It’s also easy to measure, and I can set myself a number of sub-goals (or habits) to reach this main goal.

Let’s be honest, goals can make us feel uncomfortable. Especially if the goal is a stretch – something that’s going to be difficult to achieve, make us sacrifice, might be boring and not glamorous. Setting goals is the combination of the result, and also the effort that you need to put in, and what you’re willing to give up, in order to achieve the goal.

I’ve worked out a few ways to set and achieve goals. I’ll share these three strategies with you, and you can decide which ones help you.

Strategy 1: Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize

I actually think it’s easier to set ten goals than three. Why? Probably because it feels great to say we achieved something. The sense of accomplishment we feel as we strike off something from our list. But here’s the thing. Sometimes, more isn’t really more.

When it comes to goal setting, I find the sweet spot for life goals is five, and daily goals are three. You might find your magic number is different. And that’s OK, too. But remember that, just like multi-tasking doesn’t really make you more productive, setting too many goals makes you confused, scattered, and lack focus.

So, grab a piece of paper (or your tablet/phone) and write down all of your goals. That’s right. Dump all of those thoughts out. You might even like to separate them into your personal and professional goals.

Take a look at them. Are they really an action list or are they goals? For instance, paying the bills or booking a facial are really tasks. They are things that need to get done. But are they really goals?

There are different ways to prioritize your goals, but I find the best way is to think about a couple of things. Which goal is the most important? Which goal is the smallest and easiest to achieve? Which goal has the biggest impact?

I have five life goals that I write out every day. If you’d like a free copy of the template I use, click here. It also includes my daily gratitude, forgiveness, and service practice.

One of my life goals is to live in a glass-walled home with views of the water, a garden, a place to swim and to have a boat. Yes, I write this goal down every day! It’s my dream home. My dream environment. I can imagine myself waking up in this home, looking out to the water, growing my own vegetables, and swimming in the lake. And my goal is actually quite close. We are building this home right now (I’ll share more about how I manifested this in another post).

Now, this massive goal is one of my biggest priorities right now. Do I have other goals that I sometimes think about? Yes! But I’m not acting on them right now. I prioritized my dream home, along with four other goals, to make up my top five life goals.

And after setting this goal, I took action to make this dream a reality. First, I set goals around buying a property on the water. I achieved that goal three years ago. Next was finding an architect to design the home. And then submit the designs for permitting and approval. At the same time, finding a builder. And all the while saving and investing in order to be able to build the house.

Now, remember that goals can be big and challenging. They can also be small and easier to achieve. There’s no right or wrong way to prioritize your goals. Just remember to set your goals, dig deep to work out why they are important to you, and go get them!

Strategy 2: Stack Your Actions

Action stacking involves combining a number of actions (or habits) to create a routine. It’s not easy to keep adding new actions to your day (and remember, this series is all about feeling less busy), so if you make a number of small changes, you can easily build this into a daily ritual.

Perhaps you have a health goal. As I mentioned earlier, I write my goal in my journal every day. And I write it as though it has already happened.

I am a size 2, with a healthy body and mind.

And to achieve this goal, I have been able to form habits by breaking them into smaller, easier actions, which are linked together. Doing it this way reduces the need to try to change too many things at once. And the routine has a few steps that are easy to remember and repeatable.

You might want to first start with a checklist to lay out the actions. Once you start following them every single day, the actions automatically stack and then become habits that become part of your daily life.

Here are my morning stacked actions, which have now become a habit. Remember, this links back to my health goal. And I can confirm it’s working! My mind and body are definitely healthier than they were a year ago, and I wear a size 2 or 4, depending on the fit and design of the clothes. This compares to a couple of years ago when I was a size 6, sometimes a size 8.

So here are the actions I’ve stacked to build daily habits:

• I meditate in bed in the morning for twenty minutes when I wake up (Why? To settle my mind and set intentions for the day).
• I take my daily vitamins and supplements (Why? Following a supplementation regime that works for me makes me feel healthier and have more energy).
• I make a smoothie and pack my lunch for work (Why? I aim for at least 100 grams of protein a day (some of the collagen peptides I love are linked below), and making my own food lets me have a cleaner diet).
• I walk to the bus, then stretch and lift weights for thirty minutes at the gym (Why? My body feels stronger, and exercise improves the way I feel).
• I text my husband a good morning message (Why? Having a successful relationship brings me joy, and it’s the little things that make a difference).

You can probably see how these habits are linking together to help me achieve my health goal. They are both conscious and unconscious decisions I make every day. And when I stack them together, I can achieve my goal even faster.

How can you stack your actions to form habits and achieve your goals?

Strategy 3: Measure Your Results

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

Henry David Thoreau

Read that again.

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

In other words, achieving your goals means you need to measure your results. There are different ways to measure your results and success. The way I like to think about it is to reflect on what you became by achieving your goals. Did it bring you joy?

Another of the daily goals that I write down is:

I am a phenomenal woman, wife, mother, sister and daughter.

So how on earth do I measure results against this? Well, it’s a daily thing. At the end of the day, I reflect on my relationships. Did I connect with people in the way that I intended? Did I serve others? Some days I receive direct feedback on how I did. Good and not-so-good feedback. Other days, it’s more intuitive and a bit harder to measure.

Just remember that to measure your results, you need to take some form of action. Are you setting goals but not achieving the results? Yes, it’s amazing to dream and design. But at some point, you have to build and actually do something.

Do you ever do this? Researching. Thinking. Contemplating. Dreaming. Sometimes it’s easy to procrastinate or dwell on perfectionism. And it stops you from taking action. Sam Laura Brown talks about this on her blog and podcast. Jump on over and take a look. It’s an amazing resource.

So, that’s it for Week 4 of the Feel Less Busy series. I hope you found it helpful! This week we talked about how to set goals. Prioritize them. Stack actions to form habits. Measure results, especially focusing on what you became rather than what you received. You’ll find that setting and achieving goals brings purpose to your life.

I’d love to hear what you do to feel less busy in the comments. Remember that time is both precious and plentiful. So enjoy its abundance and joy.