Hellooooo lovelies!
Hope you’re all doing well and you’re having a fantastic week. Welcome back to the second episode of this brand-new the Audacious Babe Podcast, designed for YOU – the audacious female photographer. To help you along your photography business journey and to hopefully inspire and empower you to embrace your inner SuperWoman and turning that dream business and dream life of yours into a reality. Oh Yeah!!
To truly start this podcast off, I thought it was quite fitting to talk about the 5 Golden Steps To Setting Your Goals The Inspired Way. Yes! I know goal setting can be a bit of a tedious task and might not be fun for some, and some of you might even think, how is this relevant for a photography business… I just take pictures for clients.
No. I believe any type of business that wants to succeed in the business world needs goals. Whether this is a 1-woman (or man) photography business or a large cooperation with 4000 employees.
Goals are basically your dreams put into action.
Yup, that’s right. Don’t get me wrong, dreaming is soooo very important. And I am a strong believer in dreaming big. But a dream might still be a dream 10 years from now, unless you are thinking about some action to get you there.
You need to take action. And I don’t mean “let’s be busy for the sake of being busy” kind of actions but actual inspired action. Action that gets you results and moves you forward.
Goal setting gives you that focus and direction. When you think about it, goal setting can a very powerful tool. It allows you to take control of your business and even of your life if you wanted to include life goals. It also provides you with a benchmark for success – so it can actually be a great motivator to keep going, to keep doing what you’re doing and to keep you focussed.
Goal setting is a great process that starts with figuring out what it is that you actually want to achieve – short-term or long-term – and ends with a lot of hard work but having the steps laid out for you on how to get there.
John Rohn- the man many consider to be America’s Foremost Business Philosopher, stated in an article in the Success magazine:
“Life is designed in such a way that we look long-term but live short-term. We dream for the future but live in the present. Unfortunately, the present can produce many difficult obstacles. But setting goals provides long-term vision in our lives. We all need powerful, long-range goals to help us get past those short-term obstacles. Fortunately, the more powerful our goals are, the more we’ll be able to act on and guarantee that they will actually come to pass.”
I found this such a true statement that I wanted to share this with you. We need to power through those short term obstacles in our lives. But to keep motivated and actually have a purpose and make a change in our business or in our lives, we need those long-term visions. Those goals that keep us going. Am I right?
Another great quote I found is by NY bestselling author Michael Hyatt:
“The practice of goal-setting is not just helpful; it is a prerequisite for happiness. Psychologists tell us that people who make consistent progress toward meaningful goals live happier more satisfied lives than those who don’t.”
Ha! How cool is that? So we are actually also much happier if we set us some goals that are achievable and meaningful. This sooo good!
Ok but in order to create successful goals, I believe you need to have a certain mindset. You need to be open minded, allow yourself to dream and really get into the depths of what you actually want in life and in business. The goals need to be achievable, meaningful to you and very specific. Also add a time-frame to them. This will help to get into action about them.
I’ve created a little workbook for you to help you along this process.
So let’s get some clarity about what you really want in business and maybe even in life if you wanted to use this process also for your life goals 😉
Here are my 5 golden steps that you can use to help you with setting some amazing goals and ensures that you will tick them off one by one in no time.
Make sure to use the workbook and follow along:
Step 1: Write down your dreams and visions – either for business and/or for life So this could include all aspects of your life: relationships, money, your photography skills, bookings, travel, fun, family, everything! – and let go of all limitations here. Just dream and see what you come up with. Give yourself a little breathing space. Close your eyes, inhale and exhale slowly and deeply and relax. And then just do that for every aspect in life you’d like to set some goals for. Just do a little braindump so to speak. Think about what you’d want for this week, this month, 6 months from now and a year from now. You can even go longer term let’s say 3 years from now. Have fun with this!
Step 2: Now look at your dreams and let’s start to make them more actionable and turn them into incremental goals. But don’t overwhelm yourself with goals that are too far-fetched and make you feel the goals are not reachable. Make small incremental goals instead that make you gain momentum and when you achieve them.
Step 3: Formulate your goals in an affirmative way. State them in the present as if you just achieved them and include feelings and emotions that are attached to reaching the goals. I.e. “I am so delighted and proud of myself that I’ve reached my income goal of £3,000 this month” You can also see with this example that I’ve included some metric to which you can measure your goal. A monthly income goal of £3,000 is something tangible and measurable. Try to include that for your goals to make them more specific.
Step 4: Celebrate yourself and reward yourself every time you have reached a goal. Share your win in our community and treat yourself to something amazing. Maybe a day off, a new book, a massage or similar. These don’t need to be expensive or time-consuming things, even just small things like a glass of bubbly to celebrate might be enough. Be creative and have fun with this. So in your workbook, think of a reward for each of your goal that you’ve written down in step 2 and 3 – and PLEASE make sure you are actually doing them. This is soooo important. More often than not we forget to celebrate ourselves for all our achievments and accomplishments. This is the perfect time to start with recognising all the amazing things you are doing in business and in life!
Step 5: Review your goals on a regular basis. Rewrite new incremental goals. Step by step you are getting closer to making your dreams come true quite literally. Re-use the workbook and every so often just start from scratch. Our goals as do our dreams change overtime. So just make sure you review them and stay true to yourself. And don’t forget that pad on your back to yourself.
Ok wow. And there you have it.
This ends today’s episode about goal setting. I hope you found this useful. Join the discussion and let me know how you get on with your goals inside our private Facebook Group.
I’d love to hear from you and we can be all accountability partners for each others. Whoop whoop!
With love,
Magdalena x
References:
http://www.success.com/article/rohn-4-tips-for-setting-powerful-goals
