Wobbly about Goal Setting

I have been asked to be a guest speaker at local women’s networking group tomorrow night. I love speaking to groups of women and love the business promotion opportunities that they provide- in fact I love speaking full stop-just ask anyone who knows me! * Yet I am currently uncharacteristically, underwhelmed at the prospect, as the topic is “goal setting”.


Now goal setting is basically the bread and butter of any good coaching session so I should be filled with enthusiasm and ideas for the talk. So what does this uncommon reluctance tell me? Like all good coaches, I do lots of self reflecting-Why am I feeling this reaction? What is the deeper meaning here? How can I make the talk tomorrow evening helpful and engaging for the people who come?

This is what I have discovered from my self questioning.

We are bombarded with messages- internally-by ourselves and externally- by others- about goal setting- lose weight, get rich, spend less, be kinder etc etc-particularly at this time of year-Post NYE and the start of the working year -so my reluctance comes from knowing that many such goals are set, yet many more are discarded, not met and so the whole exercise becomes a bit of a downer. So I am concerned that people will just hear goal setting and switch off.

Therefore, I have decided that the crux of my talk will be to inspire people to take some time out of their busy lives and plan how they want their life to be in 2012-in all it’s glory-work, play, study, money, travel-whatever -then choose the domain that they want to make the biggest change and decide what needs to happen first to help that change happen-so before they know it my audience would have set themselves a target and the g.o.a.l. word has not even been mentioned!**

In conclusion I will remind the audience that the most successful people never tackle such a change program on their own and to encourage them to understand change takes time, support of others and rewarding of small steps. I’ll let you know how it goes.

By the way-what are your tips for effective goal setting?

* In case you are worried about what sort of coach I would be please, be re-assured I am an excellent listener as well (and modest, as you can already tell)

** I will use a Mind Mapping technique- a very powerful and easy way to plan, and then review your life.