4 Ways To Stay Focused After Smashing Your Goals

Almost everyone starts the new year off by setting goals, whether those be personal, business or hobbiest goals, and it's at around the half point in the year when you find you're either doing pretty darn well, or not so well. Staying focused on your goals can be a headache, and boy do I know it, but knowing how to stay focused is the only way you're going to achieve them and feel great afterwards. Sharing your building steps, pushing yourself with smaller, more tangible goals - it's all about getting to your goals and feeling absolutely awesome afterwards.

But what happens when you've smashed your goals, what comes next?

People who've reached their goals tend to fall into a sort of void. They've been working at something for weeks, months, possibly years, and when it all comes to a head, they've got nothing left to motivate them. There's nothing to work hard at, there's no reward at the end of the road, just a path that leads to somewhere and nowhere. It's important to remember that reaching and achieving your goals is not the end result, and as with most things, there's always another adventure or exciting journey to be had right around the corner.

Some don't want another all absorbing goal on their plate just yet, and quite understandably so too, and for those people, there's a few things you can be doing after your achieving your goals to keep you going strong until the year ends, rather than resting on your laurels and feeling lost.

Analyze How You Achieved Your Goals

If you've achieved your goals much sooner than you thought you would, then first things first, give yourself a round of applause and get yourself some sort of reward because wow, do you deserve it, but remember to come back and get started on looking at how and why you managed to achieve those goals in record time. While you might have just struck it lucky, one of the reasons people achieve their goals sooner than expected is because they underestimate their worth, and what they can achieve when they put their mind to it, and so they achieve them sooner than they expected to.

I started the year with a goal of achieving 5k pageviews each month by the end of 2016. At that point in time, I was only gaining maybe half that on a good month, so it's fair to say I didn't have high expectations. Fast forward to March, and I'd smashed that goal by 32%. I'd completely and utterly underestimated what I could achieve and how quickly I could achieve it, but what amazed me most was how I'd managed to do it.

My Books, Blogging and Life Goals for 2016

Earlier in the year, I wrote a master list of every resource and every program I use and while their have been more chilled pieces of content in between, most of my content has been in response that master list, sharing the programs I use, the skills and features I've learnt and used most, creating in-depth tutorials and step-by-step processes so you can use those resources just the same, and I'm almost certain that's been one of the driving forces behind my increased pageviews.

Alas, it's worth remembering that what works for me may not work for you in the same manner, however, being able to sit down and take a good hard look at your goals and how you achieved them, including every little step, every minor investment is without a doubt on the best tasks to give yourself afterwards. Did you think that Apple or Facebook just smash their business goals, order themselves pizza and call it a day? Of course not, they gather their evidence and look how they did it, and how they could do it better next time, and so should you.

Extend/Enlarge Your Original Goals

We've already talked a little about underestimating yourself and what you can achieve, and this commonly comes from setting too smaller goals in the first place. I highly recommend cutting your goals into smaller, more achievable steps that make the result all that more tangible, but starting off with a small goal in the first place can turn out to be undermining for you, and less likely to give you that fist-punching-the-air feeling afterwards.

As a small cherub in my first infant school, there was a rather lovely teacher who said to us - "Those that achieve the most in life are those who aim try but miss, yet never give up. Those that aim low and hit have nothing to later motivate themselves." - and that phrase has stayed with me throughout my childhood. The phrase itself has many variations, one of the more common is from Les Brown - "Most people fail in life not because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low and hit." - and it's a phrase that's never been more right.

4 Ways To Stay On Top Of and Focused On Your Goals

Your goals are only ever as big as you want them to be. If you want to achieve great things, then it's not worth setting small goals you know you'll achieve against goals that will challenge you instead. Having analyzed your goals and how you achieved them, you'll know whether you you smashed your goals by willpower, or whether you were aiming too low to start with, and if it's the latter, it's time to make them bigger my friend. Fear of failure is what stops us shaking hands with success - don't let fear stop you.

Create New Complementary Goals

Let's say for example that you've create a crazy goal and you've achieved it in record time. Your amazed, but your thrilled, and you feel like a million bucks. You've looked at your goals and the steps you took to smash them, and you're ready to do something new and eager to set some more, exciting goals for yourself, but where do I start? If you're confident you've achieved what you set out to achieve and want a new task ahead of you, it's worth setting some new complementary goals that work alongside the goals you've already achieved.

Setting Blog Goals and Why They're Important

Imagine a lady sets out to lose 40 pounds, changes her eating habits, joins the gym and shifts the weight. She feels amazing and she's ready for something new, so she takes up weight training. She's a star, and she's smashing her goals, but she's putting weight on in terms of muscle the more weight training she does, and her figure not what is once was. She LOVES the weight training and reaching her goals, but not how it's undoing all her earlier hard work and first set of goals in terms of being slim and lighter in weight.

As great as it is to set new and exciting goals, if the new goals are going to counteract the previous goals and work against all the hard work you've put into getting to your current position, then there's a very good chance you'll feel like that weight-training lady. It's super important to create goals that will compliment your earlier achievements so you can continue along your journey and reach your final destination. Great examples in the blogging and business world would be growing your email list after growing your social media following, or introducing a new source of revenue in your business if you've exhausted your current stream.

Share Your Achievements and Experiences

If there's one thing sharing your goals does for you, it holds you accountable, and when you share those with your network of support, or community members and band of followers, they'll be ready to hold you accountable too. That's why it's always worth sharing your achievements and success with others, as not only does it say 'look what I did!' but it also says 'see, you can do it too' - especially if you're in the business of teaching others how something is done.

I've shared a lot of my achievements and successes over the years I've been blogging, everything from being featured on Picmonkey, growing my Instagram presence, and creating an awesome Blog Planner, but I've also shared my failures and my really bad life experiences, like my failed side hustle, my life with depression, and my sexual assault, and these, believe it or not, are the things your audience wants to read about.

Okay, they may not be up for the seriousness of the latter two, but your followers and readers want to know how you got yourself featured on one of your favourite programs blogs, or how you've gained over 350 followers in 3 months, or the ins and outs behinds creating your most downloaded product in, forever. They not only want to see that you've done it, and celebrate with you, but they want to see that it can be done, and that with some time, some effort, and a hell of a lot of passion and dedication, they can do it too.

Sharing your achievements and your experiences isn't about showing off and feeling like a god, it's about motivating others to keep on going, to give those struggling an extra boost. Your success is not their failure, it's their motivation, and there's no better feeling than helping somebody achieve something awesome.

You should always, without a doubt reward yourself for achieving your goals, no matter how small, but resting on your laurels and calling it a day is no way to honour the hard work, the time and the effort, and the sacrifices you've made to get there. Set time aside to learn how you achieved it all, and think of ways you can extend or compliment them to achieve more, but above all else, share your achievements and goal smashing will other people. Celebrating a certain occasion is always more fun with friends, but make sure to keep the cake all for yourself..

What do you do when you've achieved your goals?

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