Setting goals is great. It’s usually the achieving of the goals that trips us up, right? That’s not the case if you learn how to create a habit that will help you achieve your goals. Today we’re diving into how to create a habit.
IE 54: How to Create a Habit to Achieve Your Goals
As we continue in our series on goal setting today, I want to talk about something that I feel gets overlooked far too often which is how to create a habit to reach a goal.
We have talked a lot about how to set SMART goals, how to create a vision for where you want to go, how to differentiate between performance goals and outcome goals, and more. But if you think that you can just set those goals and watch them achieve themselves, you are mistaken.
Performance goals are nothing more than habits that need to be created. I know we all think about bad habits as ones we need to break and that could very well be something you need to address in your business success this year.
The fact is, though, that knowing how to create a habit to achieve a goal is the quickest way to get where you want to go. So let’s talk about how to create a habit and how to make it work for you.
How to Create a Habit: Plan Your Day
Do you remember when I talked about the difference between outcome goals and performance goals? If you recall, performance goals are the tasks and actions you need to do every day to get you to the outcome goal.
Did you get that? Every day.
Sounds like a habit, right? That’s because it is! As you consider which tasks you need to do on a daily basis to achieve your big goals, you are creating habits. As you create your daily schedule, you need to consider these tasks and plan them into your day.
If you haven’t heard of it before, you need to get familiar with Amy Porterfield’s tiger time. This is a set time every day when you focus on getting quality content created.
How to Create a Habit: Eliminate Switching Tasks
Okay, I see you rolling your eyes. I hear you, sighing and saying, “Come on, Jenny. I have a newborn and a 3-year-old. I can’t exactly stop switching tasks.”
The problem is that when you switch tasks, your brain has to constantly refocus on whichever task you are going back to. Let’s say you are writing a blog post or creating a new recipe and you see a notification that an email has come through from a brand that you sent a proposal to.
Of course, you are now going to go right over to see what the company said. And if they want to work with you, you are going to immediately begin thinking about what you want to offer.
So now you’ve gone from writing a recipe to creating a proposal, and in the meantime, you are using completely different sides of the brain to accomplish each task.
Every time you switch tasks, you lose valuable time that you could be using to create content. Your brain has to use that time to refocus. These few minutes add up if it happens multiple times per day.
How to Create a Habit: Create Project Lists
Are you thinking to yourself that you don’t have any projects? I think that too often we just see the big picture and don’t really understand that to get to those big goals, we have to have specific projects along the way.
Perhaps one of your goals for this quarter is creating a quality lead magnet to grow your email list. That needs to be your focus, your project. As you plan your day, you need to include focused time to work on that specific project.
Creating a high-quality lead magnet is a large project which requires several steps along the way. You need to have time set aside each day to work on it. It should become a habit for you to work on that project each day.
The thing that works for me is to sit down on Sunday and set my goals for the week. I know what projects I need to get done in the upcoming week and which tasks must be done each day to get me there. If I don’t complete these tasks, my business won’t move forward.
How to Create a Habit: Be Accountable
We have talked before about the need to have accountability. You need someone that will hold you accountable to complete the tasks that you say you are going to do.
This is one of the reasons I believe so strongly in mastermind groups. Within a mastermind, you have a group of people who are committed to helping you achieve your goals. These people will not all be within your niche and that is okay.
When trying to create new habits, an accountability partner can help you truly make your tasks a habit and not just random tasks that you may or may not get done.
How to Create a Habit: Expect to Fail
You weren’t expecting me to say that, were you? But it’s true.
It is going to take you some time to learn what works for you and for your business. And as you’re figuring that out, you will have times along the way where you don’t reach the goal you set for yourself.
I’m going to be 100% honest with you here; I tend to go for the gold.
I set 3 levels of goals for myself; the “I know I can reach this” level, the “this would be awesome” level, and the “if I hit that it would be AMAZING” level.
The problem is, I tend to just ignore the smaller stuff and go for the AMAZING level. I am perfectly okay with getting to the end and only hitting the middle level and it not making me feel like a failure.
If you set a goal of earning $10K per month and you currently earn $3K, it is likely that you may not reach that goal as quickly as you would like. So that’s technically a failure.
But what if you make it to $7K per month? Is that really a failure? I mean, you more than doubled your income, so perhaps your goal should have been closer to the $7K mark to be more Attainable. (*Remember, the A from SMART goals is attainable.)
As long as you are making some progress, you need to be able to get back up, dust yourself off, and keep moving forward. Failure is part of the process so get comfortable with it.
One of the easiest ways to pick yourself up and move forward is to have a group of people who will encourage you and give you ideas on how to keep going. If you need a group like that, be sure to check out my group Mastering Your Influence. We are currently running a 14-day free trial so there is no better time than now to check it out!
I hope this episode has helped you in creating habits that will further your business this year. As always, be sure to comment below and come join my free Facebook group to get even more help and encouragement.
