2009 - Your Goals - Your Future

With the new year now three weeks old, how many of us experienced an all too brief period of time at the turn of the year where we felt optimistic about the year ahead, set ourselves new goals and challenges, and told ourselves that this time next year we’d be millionaires? I’m sure that I wasn’t alone in setting new and better expectations of myself in 2009.

Reviewing the previous year and thinking about how we want to change in the year to come is a practice that dates back to the Roman Republic. When Julius Caesar introduced the Julian calendar in 46B.C. the month of January was named after the Roman god Janus.

Janus was the god of gates and doorways, beginnings and endings and was typically depicted with two faces, one looking back on to the past and a second looking forward to the future.

People have been setting themselves new years resolutions ever since and today many of us still set ourselves goals for the new year– to lose weight and get fit, get a better job, stop smoking, reduce stress at work, improve our work/life balance or just to spend more time at home with our families.

The difference between setting a resolution that you’ll forget after a month, or a resolution that will enable you to change your life dramatically is the commitment and motivation that you bring to living your life differently.

But the reality of sticking to our new year resolutions, or our new year goals, is harder than ever in this time of global doubt. The credit crisis, climate change and the safety of our friends and loved ones in changing social times can create significant doubt and anxiety.

Anxiety can manifest in numerous different ways. If you’ve ever felt worried, tired, irritable, had difficulty concentrating, or been unable to sleep then anxiety could have been a contributing factor.

Anxiety can be experienced at numerous different times; preparing for a presentation or a meeting with a line manager, boarding an aeroplane, waiting for the deciding penalty to be kicked or when we’re still awake at 3am. In October 2008 the BBC reported that 'credit crunch insomnia' was keeping half of the surveyed men and women of an online poll awake at night.

Anxiety is a part of life that we experience most regularly when faced with situations that we perceive as threatening or difficult. We subconsciously access our previous experience or our understanding of the situation and make a choice as to how we will react.

An exploration of the effects of the financial crisis on our levels of anxiety in the Observer newspaper in January stated, “the main thing we have lost, though, is the seductive idea that, somehow, our future might follow a predictable pattern.”

Does the idea of not having a certain future create anxiety, or panic? Do you worry about your future, the next presentation that you have to give, or how you will respond if you find yourself one of the projected 600,000 people who may lose their job by the end of 2009? In short do you have the resources to achieve the goals that you have set yourself for the future?

Happily, the short answer is yes. You already have all of the personal resources that you will ever need to achieve the goals that you want for the future.

If you know this is true, and you know how to access your resources, you are well on the way to the future that you want. If you know its true but can’t quite see how it is going to happen, or if you are not sure that it is true at all, then there is good news - your future is your choice. You can choose to set and work towards goals that will enable you to have a successful future. You can choose to approach the future in an empowered, confident and motivated state.

Top Tips for 2009

• Use the coaching wheel to identify areas for change in your life. Then set and commit to resonant goals to drive yourself forward. Understanding how you will achieve what you want in life will enable you to work towards your future.

• Rethink how you will approach goals or situations in which you may experience anxiety. Choose to do something different - If you do what you always did – you’ll get what you always got.

• Notice when you experience negative feelings and work to change the language and feelings that you associate with them. As with any behaviour or skill the more that you practice worrying or being anxious the better at it you will become.

• Create and control your resource states. NLP techniques can allow you to be confident, motivated, excited, enthusiastic (or any other resource that you choose) when you most need it.

• Celebrate your success! When you have set a goal and successfully achieved it you’ll have a great, excited feeling and you should enjoy it! This feeling will be perfect to anchor as a resource state to use when you need it.

• Set new goals – success breeds success.nn© Copyright Nick Moody 2009