3 Secrets to take the stress away from setting and accomplishing your goals

Can you believe it is 2024? Lately, as I’ve been talking with you about your goals for the new year, I’ve noticed that there are also high levels of stress. Sure, you just came back from a nice holiday season with several vacation days. But now, as you look to the year ahead and all that you want to accomplish, it can be overwhelming. So today I want to talk to you a little bit about strategies you can use for managing that stress and overwhelm that tend to accompany big, exciting goals.

Remember comparison is the thief of joy. You do not need to compare yourself to your peers or competitors. Your team, your family, your clients are not comparing your performance to the Jones’ down the street, why should you? What matters is are you giving yourself the gift of your best effort? Are you trying to be 1% better than you were yesterday? Allow this principle to apply to your team as well. Many times I have people complain to me that their team members don’t have the same work ethic as they do. Or that their team just doesn’t care as much about the business’ success as they do. Of course they don’t! They aren’t you. It isn’t fair to expect someone else to be exactly as you are. Rather than comparing their best efforts to your best efforts, try comparing them only to themselves. Encourage them to set personal goals to improve their performance and hold them accountable for their growth.
Progress is Perfection. I know many of you are perfectionists. You want to do everything perfectly right from the start. I’ve seen so many instances where perfectionism prevents a person from starting on the thing they want to do. The fear of failure or making a mistake holds them back from trying. But I’m here to tell you that progress IS perfection. Perfectionism tells us when things go wrong or we don’t hit our goals we should just stop and give up. If you can’t do it right, don’t do it. Progress tells us that when things go wrong or you don’t hit your goals, it’s ok. You take that experience, learn from it and continue down the path to your goal. It is irrational to expect that everything will go according to plan 100% of the time. It is rare to get everything right the first time. And let’s say you do get it right the first time, does that mean you can stop all your efforts and enjoy that one time you got it right for the rest of your life? No, of course not. We always want to be adapting, changing, improving, progressing.
Embrace the compound effect. There is a great book called The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy that I highly recommend to you. The basic idea is that you start with one small goal and then build on it. For example, you have a big goal to have an office environment so healthy and synergetic that your employees love coming to work and never want to leave. If you employ the compound effect, you start small and put all your efforts into the first step. Let’s say that is setting your core values for your office. Once that is well established, you then add on the next step which might be holding a morning huddle. Then you put all your efforts into making sure that morning huddle not only happens but that it has a purpose and is productive. Then maybe you add on an end-of-day huddle etc. Can you see how each step builds upon the other? By employing this type of strategy your efforts become compounded and your results become exponentially better.

I am loving hearing your goals for 2024! I know that having big, exciting, scary goals can be both invigorating and terrifying. But I also know that you have the capacity to accomplish any goal you set.

Proactive, Productive and Profitable,

Dino Watt