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Now is a great time to set yourself and your business up for success for 2018.
How? Through motivating yourself and your colleagues to be successful.


You can motivate people in three ways: Carrot, stick and goals

Carrot and stick are not long term options because either the carrot has to keep getting bigger and bigger to incentivize people to move towards it or the stick has to keep going which is tiring for all! Instead goal setting fires up our internal motivators and make us want to perform for our reasons not anyone else's.


People tend not to set good goals for 4 main reasons:

1. They think it will take too much time and effort
2. They find it threatening
3. Fear of failure
4. Don’t know how to begin the process


Although these can all sound very plausible, we should not let our fears get in the way of success this year. The difference for those who take the time to set goals is they decide where they want to be, rather than just muddling along and being surprised where they end up.

If you are not sure how to start with this here are my top tips on how to make sure you are setting great goals!

1. Write them down.
It is tempting to have them all your head. The problem with this is human nature! We tend to be either too hard on ourselves when we don’t get there or let ourselves off the hook.
2. They need to be SMARTER.
This stand for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Bound, Enjoyable and Rewarding. I feel we can too often ignore the enjoyable and rewarding part. These are your goals! They need to be fun otherwise whats the point of starting?
3. Have you covered short-term and long-term goals?
A short term goal can be anything you can accomplish in less than a year and long term goals look a year or more out.
4. Get Personal.
These goals are about you - it tends to be very British to not spend time on our goals because it seems selfish. Yet, this is one time in the year when it is all about me! What do you want from this year?
5. Business Goals Too.


Make sure we have our business goals clearly written down as hitting these will help us hit our personal goals.

Goal setting is our first step in how to succeed. 2018 can be your year… if you want it to be.

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