I’ve always been a fairly accountable person:  If I say I’m going to do something – and it’s important to me – I do it.  That said, I...

I write and teach a lot about goal setting. And goal setting is great when you have clear, tangible things you want to accomplish -...

When I met my husband, I had no idea how bad I was a handling transitions. Every single time a season changes, I'm nostalgic for the one that's over. I get sad leaving my parents' house at the end of a visit. I spend the last day of vacation grouchy. And don't even talk to me about pre-k graduation. (So. Many. Kleenex.) So it's no surprise that, for me, the whole New Year New You thing doesn't resonate. I liked the old me and the old year. And what does this new year re

Achieving goals requires focus, energy, and willpower. But all of those are resources that can be easily depleted, and if you don't have the skills to renew them, you can be caught empty-handed when you most need some support. In their deeply enjoyable book Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success , the brilliant collection of authors lay out two things to consider as you're looking to make a change -- your motivation and your ability. That is, do you WANT to ch

You've written your goals (SMARTly, of course) and you're ready to go. Before you drive off into the sunset in pursuit of your goals, though, it's a good idea to get clear on some of the things that could crop up along the way and keep you from your destination. Planning for obstacles helps you in moments of crisis. When you anticipate some of the things that could come up and make a plan for how to handle them, you've got something to rely on in the moment. Spend some time

If you've been following this series for a couple of weeks now, you will have already identified your goals, written them the right way, prioritized them, and gotten pretty SMART already. The next step is to take your Big Picture Goals and break them down. But before we do that, I want to tell you the story of a real person I know who uses this technique impeccably. I have an old friend -- let's call him Frank (but that's not his name) -- who used to be a theatre director.

As I mentioned in an earlier post , not all goals need to be SMART. The Big Picture goals you use as North Stars don't need to be SMART, they need to be inspiring and exciting. But in order to get there -- to climb the mountain of your dreams -- you need to know where you'll be stopping along the way, and exactly what it will take to get you there. That's where the SMART goals come in. There are lots of different kinds of SMART out there, and mi There are lots of different

There are lots of ways to prioritize goals, but if you are operating by yourself (and not part of an organization or family that does goal-setting together), this is a simple way to identify what needs to happen first. I use three categories to think about and rank goals: Priority 1: Must Do These goals must be achieved if you are to consider yourself successful. These are your highest priority goals. Not every goal can be a Priority 1, and sometimes only certain Milestone g

You may think that writing a goal is the same as writing an email or anything else you write a thousand times a day. But it's not. Here are some tips for writing goals that stick with you, enable your mind to digest them, and are more likely to be achieved. Write them in the present tense . Which one sounds more like you'll be at the gym tonight -- "I want to go to the gym tonight" or "I'm going to the gym tonight"? They're essentially the same thing, but one has you alre

I like to look at three major categories of goals: Big Picture goals, Milestone goals, and Mini goals (or action steps). Each has its own components, qualities, and needs. Let's look at them one by one. Big Picture Goals These are the long-term goals that are not achievable in one step. They take time and effort and are likely made up of a series of smaller goals. If we think of goal setting like hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro, these are the mountain themselves. They are major

Not sure what goals you want to set, or what goals would make you happiest if you achieved them? The tools I share below will help you both come up with goals and align those goals with your wants, needs, and hopes. Tool 1: The Wheel of Life The eight sections in the Wheel of Life represent different aspects of your life, each of which is a potential place for a goal. Reflect on your level of satisfaction in each life area and then, thinking of the center as 0 and the oute

This is the first in a series of posts about goal setting that are tailor-made for 2022, the first year in the pandemic when we can really plan and set goals without being completely sideswiped by the mysteries and surprises of the pandemic. If you, like me, have taken a break from goal setting the last couple of years, now is a great time to get back to it. If you, also like me, don't particularly like setting goals, this series is for you. Let's take a quick look at where