Values Aligned Goal Setting - Part 2 Creating Goals

In the first part of this series, we explored values aligned goal setting and identifying your core values. Now we are going to the exciting stuff - creating your goals!

There is a lot of information, guides, and best practices out there about goal setting and how to set yourself up to follow through on what you are looking to achieve. Many are familiar with the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Based) acronym, which helps ground goals in specificity and measurable outcomes, as well as give a time span for goal achievement. This is certainly a helpful way to go about goal setting, and often leads to success. Some folks, however, can find using SMART goals overwhelming, confining, and the minute they miss their first time-bound marker they give up. I have certainly been there! In the past, I have abandoned my SMART goals because I wasn’t adhering to the specificity or meeting the deadlines I had set for myself. I also found I had more general or lifelong goals that I want to grow over a long period of time, and wanted a more flexible structure for goal setting.

My guidance is to choose a goal setting method that works for you! You know yourself and your life best, so feel free to reflect on which of the following goal setting strategies resonate most with you.

One option is to choose a word or phrase of the year that guides your actions and intentions. Feel free to try out different words for different seasons, consider phrases that have been meaningful to you (mine has certainly been “We can do hard things” from Glennon Doyle this last year), and what words or phrases remind you to stay rooted in your values.

You could also choose themes tied to your values that you would like to focus on. For example, perhaps one of your core values is communication and a theme you want to focus on is cultivating meaningful communication in your relationships. You may have multiple theme areas connected to each value, one for each, or maybe one value area you want to grow in particular. Once again, do what works best for you!

Sometimes setting annual goals can be overwhelming due to uncertainty and our inability to predict what may happen further out in the future (hello, 2020 and the start of 2021). It may be helpful to do quarterly goal setting, and create values-based goals every three months or so. I am sharing this blog series on goal setting in April, so you all know I am a fan of a quarterly refresh! Take some time to reflect on what values you may want to focus on for a particular season, and craft goals that work within your current life happenings. You can always set intentions and sketch out some plans for further out in the future, and then come back to them for refinement at the start of the next quarter. 

You can, of course, also set annual goals tied to your values. Some of these may be very specific, and some may be more general and carry over for multiple years and have different action steps for each year. For example, I know that deepening my coaching practice is going to be an ongoing goal that I have for many years. It is aligned with my values of helping others, joy, and doing high quality work. This year, progress on this goal includes business building, gaining more coaching hours, and completing the ICF knowledge exam so I can complete my Associate Certified Coach credential. In future years, deepening my coaching practice may include advanced training, working with a certain number of clients, and creating new coaching programs. 

Once again, it’s helpful to center your annual goals on your core values so that your goals are meaningful and personalized to you. Create goals that focus on what is important to you in this moment - perhaps there are values that are more aspirant for you that you would like to cultivate, special projects that you want to focus on, or life events that you want to be able to move through with ease (I am currently planning a wedding, so this is definitely me!). Some goals may be really specific, and others more amorphous. Whatever works best for you is great!

Feel free to try out different goal setting methods, or a few in combination with one another. If you have been reading, and thinking “But Amy, I don’t know what goal setting method works best for me…” - play around! I find playful experimentation to be a great way to explore new things and try out different processes. You can mix and match these methods, try one for a few months, or cycle through a few different ways to set goals.  I encourage you to take some time to reflect on what is working for you, how you are experiencing progress, and what you like or do not like about each goal setting method if you are trying more than one. It is really freeing to be open to all the different ways to create goals, and then very motivating to find the way that works best for you.

Feel free to share your goal setting exploration, or if you already have a method that you love to use! You can always email me at corron.amy@gmail.com or connect with me on Instagram @amersy 

For the final part of this series on Values Aligned Goal Setting, we’ll look at how to identify your action steps and different accountability tools. Anyone already know where they fall on Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies??