[164] FREE GIFT – How To Have Fun Setting Yearly Goals

Set Yearly Goals

 

 

Learn how to set goals and have fun at the same time? Yes it’s possible. I teach you what I learnt from one of my mentors about goal setting. I hope you find today’s episode useful! To download your FREE gift, follow the link below. Enjoy ;)

Episodes mentioned

Free Gift – www.www.englishmadesimple.net/goals
[067] How To Achieve Your Goals Fast (Goals Made Simple)

 

Transcript

Hey amigos y amigas, you are listening to the English Made Simple show, this is episode number 1-6-4, number one hundred and sixty-four, numero ciento sesenta y cuatro.

Hey there, it’s moi, Milena – your host at English Made Simple, you can find me by visiting the website, www.englishmadesimple.net.

Well, first things first, Happy New Year, Feliz Año Nuevo, Happy 2018, the Year of the Dog if you are following the Chinese horoscope.

In Australia, we celebrate the normal New Year, the end of the year and we also celebrate the Chinese New Year on 16th February. A big celebration takes place in major cities of Australia marking the Chinese New Year.

It gives us another reason to have a fiesta!

Well, I hope you had an amazing New Year’s celebration!

And the countdown to the next year has now begun.

But don’t worry, be happy. I will help you feel better about 2018. Just keep listening.

Today amigos, I want to show you how to set your goals.

Because I am still in the festive mood and I am feeling very generous, I will also share a gift with you to help you start your New Year right. So please listen till the end, how you can claim this free gift.

Before we start, I want to say something, why do we set goals? Why should we do this?

In my opinion everyone should be setting goals….it gives us something to look forward to in the year, and it also gives us a sense of achievement. Like we have accomplished something and it makes us feel successful.

I am now looking at my goals I set last year and I am thinking… wow, when I wrote this back in January of 2017 I did not expect to achieve it at all, but I did. I have achieved more than I expected of myself.

So now I am feeling motivated to set more goals. I want you to have the same feeling.

About the same time last year, in episode #67 – I shared an acronym with you which was S.M.A.R.T. and it stands for SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE, ACHIEVABLE, REALISTIC & TIME BASED goals.

You will often hear other teachers or managers (if you work at a place where English is spoken), you will hear them say something like. It’s important to set SMART goals.

You don’t have to spell it out, simply say it – SMART goals.

So, just to refresh your memory, SMART is an acronym that stands for:

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Based.

This acronym helps us set goals, the ones that can be easily tracked and executed within a specified time. The SMART goals will help us stay on track with achieving our goals and most importantly it will keep us motivated.

Now I don’t know if any of my regular listeners have tried setting SMART goals since episode #67 was released, I had even provided examples of a goal that follows this acronym and the one that doesn’t.

I am happy to share an example with you quickly. But if you want to learn more about SMART goals, please go to episode #67.

Here is an example of a goal that doesn’t follow the SMART acronym:

I want to speak English fluently.

This is what we all want. It is not impossible, it is possible to speak English fluently but it can take a bit of time, depending on your current situation.

This goal is not specific enough.

One way to make your goal Specific is to think about the subject, WHO, the WHAT, the WHERE and the WHEN of your goal.

For example:

By March 2018, I am able to confidently talk about myself in English when I visit Australia this year.

Alrighty, hope you see the difference between these 2 examples.

This all sounds great in theory, Milena. But I’ve never set goals in my life before!

I understand. It’s not easy for some people to set goals, and I understand completely. Maybe they don’t know where to start…. I want to make it easier for you, so keep listening.

Another problem you might have is that when you do sit down and start thinking about your goals, thinking about what to write and so on, you can quickly start to get distracted. You start chasing bright shiny objects.

I get it, I’ve been there before. It’s easy to get distracted, you want to achieve a lot in the next 12 months.

So I’ve decided to make it simple for you so you can start writing down your goals tomorrow.

One of my mentors taught me how to set goals and ever since then I see goal setting as a fun activity, it’s not boring or tedious anymore.

Thanks to my mentor, I can now I show you how to set your own goals.

First, I decide about the theme for 2018. What is the overall theme for me this year?

It is one or two words long. This one word has a meaning and describes your whole year.

It could be: Lifestyle, Creativity, Travel, Grow, Learn, etc…

Use Ms Word or Google docs for this exercise.

Now that you have set the theme for 2018. Write it down as a TITLE.

From here, we now create 4 columns in a WORD document or Google document and give each column a heading/title.

You can have 3 or 4 columns.

(in Spanish columnas)

The first column could be: Work or Business
The second column could be: Health, Relationships
The third column could be: Adventure or Fun Activities to do
The fourth column is optional: Impact (what kind of impact do you want to leave this year? Something that will make a difference to someone, something that will positively impact someone else)

This year, one of my goals is to donate money to my chosen Animal charity. You can also volunteer somewhere, you don’t have to donate money, but you can donate your time. You make a difference to someone this year.

The goals you set here are not following the SMART acronym. They are general goals for now. And the reason why is that it’s to make you think about your goals, write down all your goals that you can think of right now that you want to accomplish by the end of the year.

To make it easier for you, I am happy to share my own personal template that I use to create my own goals.

It’s a free download, you don’t need to put your email address or anything, just download this document for free and start writing down your own goals.

Simply go to, www.www.englishmadesimple.net/goals – I will make it available as of 2nd January.

Once you finish writing down your general goals, start creating your MONTHLY or Quarterly Goals if you want. Break it down into small and achievable parts. This is when SMART goals come into play.

For example, prioritise your GENERAL goals and for each of those give a task.
What do you want to achieve from January to March 2018?

To start writing Quarterly Goals, create another document and give it 5 columns.
First column: Your first task for January.
Second column: How will you do this task?
Third column: Due Date, by when
Fourth column: Who needs to do this task? Maybe not all goals are completed by you?
Fifth column: Status of the task.

This is how we narrow down your goals….this is how we make them actionable.

It’s hard to listen to me talk about columns and what to write on the document, so I wanted to make it easier for you and you can simply download this document.

I am giving you my TEMPLATE I use to set goals for English Made Simple. This is FREE. You can copy it and start writing down your own goals tomorrow.

Simply go to, www.www.englishmadesimple.net/goals – as I said, this will be available as of 2nd January and you can download it throughout the year.

I wish someone had explained this to me before! The way I used to set goals was to just talk about them with my friends…. And no wonder I didn’t get to achieve them. As soon as I started writing them down…. Wow, it made such a huge difference. All of a sudden I was in control of my goals.

It works guys, you should try it.

If one of your goals this year is to expand your vocabulary, improve your pronunciation, learn new phrases in English, then I would like to invite you to my program called Speak Easy which starts on 15th January and goes for 3 weeks. There are now only 3 spots available. To reserve your spot please go to, www.englishmadesimple.net/easy to learn more about the program.

Start your 2018 with a bang and join the program. It would be awesome to have you there!

I hope this is helpful to you guys! It’s time to set some goals!

Thank you for joining me, you’ve been an awesome audience, you’ve been jamming with Milena from English Made Simple, until next time, hasta la proxima!