Goal Setting
A Guide To Setting Goals
Hi everyone. I hope that you are finding this series of blog posts useful, as we begin to build up a fuller picture of the types of issues and challenges that clients frequently face, and gain an insight into how coaching can help overcome them. In today’s blog I am going to be talking about another foundational pillar of wellness coaching: setting goals.
Let’s start with a working definition; what does it mean when we say we are going to set a goal? It is important to remember that this differs slightly from setting a challenge. First of all, setting a goal means that you want to change something. For example, this might be by putting in something new or different into your life; whether you may be trying to get to bed earlier, reduce your time on social media, or alternatively take up a new hobby or sport. We need to keep these goals relatively small to start with, making sure that our goals are realistic and achievable. Then it is important to ensure that we have defined our goals specifically, and that we have introduced an element of time into our plans.
This is perhaps illustrated by looking at the ways in which goal setting can fail. Vague goals such as ‘getting fit and healthy’ can be hard to judge success against, whilst targeting, say, the end of the month to achieve this may be wholly unrealistic and lead to an unfair sense of failure. Setting a timeframe that allows us to reach our goals in a realistic period - one that is attainable but not so far off as to seem pointless - is a critical aspect of the process. It takes time for our habits to change.
When I am meeting clients for the first time I talk about the number of sessions I offer, which are usually six (though this can be extended), taken monthly. The reason for four-weekly meetings is that the little goal you are trying to implement or that change of habit will take time to take effect. You may even find that you’ve reached your goal sooner than anticipated, which of course is brilliant!
Coaching is all about making a change. Making a small change, initially, that will pave the way to a happier, healthier life.
If this resonates with you, then you can click HERE to find out more about me, and you can follow this blog to discover much more information, tips and strategies in the coming weeks.