Goal Achievement: Play to your strengths

March is an interesting time in the calendar year as it marks the first quarter point. If you have set your goals for the year - and please tell me that you have set yourself some goals for 2009, then March is a good time to determine whether or not you are on track to meet your targets or not. Is the goal you set for yourself too low, have you beaten your target for the year already? If you have then you should raise the bar just a little higher and start work again, or are you going to spend the rest of the year on a desert island sipping cocktails? Actually that sounds like a really nice idea at the moment.

But what happens if your goal is way off, you didn't meet your target during the first 2 months of the year, and it doesn't look like you will achieve anything like the target by year's end. Well a couple of questions - did you set the bar too high? If you did, then you might want to consider lowering it - just so that it is just out of reach as opposed to over the hill and far far away. If you don't you will probably get very discouraged - and it's hard to stay motivated when you know you are battling through treacle.

Of course you may not be on target because your goal is too "ho hum" - it's an OK goal, and if I reach it - hey that's a good thing. No it's not actually - if your goal is so wishy washy you have trouble saying what it is - then it's not a goal, heck it's not even a dream - more of a well you told me to set a goal for myself and that was all I could think of. No, no, no, no, no! A goal has to be something that excites you, that gets you up in a morning and pokes you in the eye with the insistence that you do something on it NOW. It should play to your strengths, and builds on your skills and abilities, so that you grow as a person. A goal isn't just about the end point - but every single step you had to take in order to achieve it. That's what is important about having a goal - what kind of person do you have to become in order to reach that target? Do you have to become better in your telephone techniques? Do you have to take some more classes? Do you need some assistance? Do you want it? And I mean really want it? Are you willing to not do certain things so you can devote more time to those daily tasks you need to do today. Each task of course is one of the tiny steps we spoke about earlier. Each tiny decision we make impacts on the speed in which we reach our goals.

So as the beginning of March is here, now is the time to evaluate yourself and your goals. Are you playing to your strengths or are you swimming through treacle?