4 Secrets to Sticking to Your New Year's Goals!

While goal-setting is an integral part for the measure of success in our business and personal lives, many of us see our goals fail before February hits.  According to Mark Murphy, author of Hard Goals: The Secret to Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be (McGraw Hill, 2010)., "People set goals all the time, but 70% of [them] never end up getting carried out in any significant way."

Here are Mark's secrets to sticking with your New Year's Goals for 2013:
1. Create an emotional attachment to your goals. Develop an emotional connection with yourself and your goal.  This means that you actually care about your goal.  For example, if you are trying to lose weight because you "ought to." This maybe much more difficult to obtain, because there is no emotional connection.  But, if you connect that I must lose weight in order live a longer life and have the opportunity to see my children grow up.  Here, there is an emotional connection with the goal.
2. Create a visual representation of your goal. Build and image or vision board that represents your goal.Place this in a common area where you will see the image daily.  This reinforces the emotional bond and constitutes a constant reminder of your goals.
3. Make goals challenging.  Use the S.M.A.R.T goal process mentioned in the previous post.  However, make them challenging as this is the key to success.  It is also very important to be mentally involved with your goals.
4. Set a shorter time line.  Set 3 month and 6 month time frames for your goals. This allows for a sense of urgency and forces the goal to be "here and now."

Now it's time to harness your energy, demand more of yourself, and engage with your goals!  Good Luck!