Maintaining Goal Progress All Year Long

Dear Coach,

Last month, I set some 2022 goals. Not resolutions really but things I want to accomplish and priorities I want to establish.

I’m a retired businessman and I know, from a business perspective, if you aren’t innovating, you’re dying. I believe the same is true in our personal lives.

The rub, however, is that I’m already beginning to let my reactive nature take over and pushing aside my values-based intentions.

How can I develop a greater sense of ownership and motivation so I can actualize my 2022 priorities?

Signed,

Innovator

Dear Innovator,

I too believe that, if we don’t regularly fine tune our lives, we miss growth opportunities and eventually decline, physically, mentally, and spiritually. In my experience as an entrepreneur, paying close daily attention to incremental results is one way to ensure success and I’ve transferred that philosophy to my personal life.

For instance, one of my goals for 2022 is to continue on the path of a healthy lifestyle including increasing my exercise, consistently eating healthy food, and weight loss. Last year I hired a health coach to help me attain these goals and hold me accountable to what I say I want to do. We talk once a week via Zoom and I send her a weekly food and exercise log. Lately, I added a line to record how many hours a day I spend writing/editing my new book because I want to publish it this year and I realized my motivation to do so was languishing.

Accessing my progress on a daily basis keeps me on track. It’s less about the numbers or exact kind of food and more about my sense of progress and achievement. Without daily assessment, I miss the opportunity to make adjustments when they’re small.

As in business, when we constantly assess, we can spot negative and positive trends and solve problems before they get out of hand. When we don’t assess honestly and often, trouble spots have a way of becoming acceptable habits.

According to Bahram Akradi, CEO of Life Time®, “Self-reflection is like anything else in life: Small and consistent beats grandiose and occasional.”

Akradi suggests asking yourself a few basic questions at the end of the day:

Where did I do some good or make some progress today?

Where did I let myself or others down?

What can I do to keep my good habits going?

What can I do to address any negative triggers or trends before they get out of hand? 

If you answer these questions every day and develop a system to routinely track your desired results, I believe you’ll start to see the progress you desire in 2022.

Mershon Niesner is a Certified Life Coach and author of “Mom’s Gone, Now What? Ten Steps to Help Daughters Move Forward After Mother Loss” which is available on Amazon; also, locally at Sunshine Booksellers and Keep In Touch. For more information visit www.mershonniesner.com. Email your coaching questions to askcoachmershon@gmail.com. Your identity will be kept strictly confidential.