How to be more successful with these quick and easy goals
When it comes to success, usually if you’re successful, you’ve achieved a goal. How do you measure the success? By the fact that you’ve accomplished your goal of course!
But what if you’ve never really set goals? What if you’re aimlessly drifting through life, not sure if you’ve reached success or not? Then you need to get started with some bite-sized goals, and this post is designed to help you out!
Perhaps you’ve reached a certain level of success in business, but you’ve never really set a goal when it comes to family. Why do we need goals when it comes to family? I mean, back when you got married, you decided together you were going to have 2.5 children, and you’ve succeeded, right?
Do you think things in your family life could improve? Sure they could! How do you improve things? By setting goals, of course! Not sure how to set goals when it comes to your family? Here are a few to get you started:
- Spend at least 30 minutes of 1-on-1 time with each child each week. This does not mean you sit in their room with them while they play a video game and you play on your phone. Quality time is key-try playing a game (I’ve got some great suggestions there, too!) or reading a book together or just to them, depending on their ages. You could even paint your daughter’s nails or throw the ball around with your son.
- Do something surprising for your spouse, without them knowing, twice a week. This does not have to be extravagant or expensive. If there is something your spouse normally does around the house, make it your goal to get it done before they can-unload the dishwasher, make the kids’ lunches for school, fold laundry, weed the garden, cut the grass. Don’t rub it in-it may even go unnoticed, but that’s okay!
- Leave your kids or spouse (or both!) a small note when you leave for work once a week. Or send them a card or letter in the mail. That’s right, the real Pony-Express-snail-mail is still going, and for 49 cents, you can blow their socks off with mail!
- Want something a bit more challenging? Find out your spouse’s and kids’ love languages and use them to your advantage! Don’t know how? Here’s a link for
a free test you can go through with your kids (even the young ones) and your spouse can take it too (they have one for kids and one for adults). This is very eye-opening and can be very handy. You might even be surprised to find out what makes your spouse happy-maybe it’s not roses, but a clean toilet!
Okay, great, now we know how to improve things with the family, but what about when it comes to yourself? Fitness, exercise, whatever you want to call it, it’s crucial when it comes to working your willpower muscle. Want some tiny steps to get started? In case you are a true couch potato, here you go:
- Commit to a brisk walk around the block three times a week, whether at work or at home. I realize we might not all live on an actual block. Or set a time limit of 10 minutes, so five minutes out, five minutes back.
- Join a gym and commit to going twice or three times a week. Now, you can’t just walk in and back out. That won’t work. Shoot for a 20-30 minute workout each time. Get your heart rate up.
- Download a Couch-to-5k app on your phone and follow the guidelines. Here’s a good one: C25k-5k Trainer FREE from Zen Labs.
Fitness goes hand-in-hand with food. Right? I’m not saying you need to go on an all paleo diet, or stop consuming gluten. I’m suggesting small changes, and here are some ideas to get you started:
- Change a soda a week to water instead. It may seem incredibly small, but it’s a step in the right direction and it will give you an easy win. Then move it up to two a week.
- Get a large water bottle with clear markings on it and commit to consuming a certain number of ounces per day.
Okay, with the water kick over, here’s a different one. Opt out of dessert except on the weekends.
Everything’s been F-related so far. Food, fitness and family. Not sure how to work business in as an f-word, and we have to be careful with those words anyway, so I’ll stick with business. Ha! How do you make small improvements at work? Here you go:
- Commit to complimenting an employee on a job well done at least twice a week. Doesn’t have to be anything big, just a “you did a nice job on that email I asked you to send out” or a “thanks for cleaning up the conference room after our meeting” type of thing.
- Choose a day of the week and build in 30 minutes for “thinking” time. Now, this may not be feasible if you have a boss and you work a 9-5 job where you
have to be active all the time, but this is a great one if you’re an entrepreneur. - Set a reasonable goal for sales or some other measurable metric. Don’t shoot for crazy stuff-set a goal that is achievable and is a number. If you close 1 sale a week, shoot for 5 a month.
There you have it! Some bite-sized goals for every area of your life! Well, maybe there are other areas, such as spiritual, etc. We can get to those at another time. Drop me a line at doug@rethinkhappy.com or shoot me a tweet @dougkisgen to let me know what small goals you are setting!
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