One of the good things about our calendar system is that when we get to December 31 we get to put a line under the year and start again. There is sense of hopefulness as we close out one year and get a chance to start all over again. If you are like a lot of people you take that chance to start again and set some new year’s resolutions. If you did that this year I wonder how yours are going so far. Quite possibly your response might be even at this early stage of the year … “Not all that well.” It seems when it comes to goals we are good starters but not quite so good finishers.

Here are some tips that will give you, and those you coach, greater staying power when it comes to completing those goals.

Develop a rich detailed picture of your goal.

Develop a sharp, clear ‘movie with soundtrack’ about what this area of your life or work will be like when you have achieved your goal. We move in the direction of our images of the future and especially when this image is clear and sharp and richly embellished it is more likely to be achieved.

Make your goals authentic.

Your goals need to connect with your important values and passions. If there is little that touches you at a deeper level about your goal(s) they will never create much spark. Or conversely if your goals contradict your most important values you will be undermining them from the start.

Make sure your inner conversation supports your goal.

We all know the ‘inside our heads tape’ that runs non-stop every day. We need to make sure this ‘tape’ is working to support the achievement of our goals. If not we need to do some rewriting and in genuine and real ways change it so that it works in our favour not, undermines us.

Get started.

Creating some momentum is a great first step. Action leads to learning and feedback so that even if what we did is not quite right we can learn modify and keep going. Just thinking or planning to get started teaches us nothing much and the longer it is before we get started the less likely we are to get started at all!

Engineer some early success.

Seeing things start to happen via some early progress greatly encourages us to keep going. So set yourself up for some early wins to build some positive emotion and energy for the longer journey towards your goal.

Anticipate roadblocks.

It’s inevitable that various challenges will emerge to slow you down on your road to goal achievement. After if these things were easy to knock over you would have already accomplished then. So anticipate where there might be challenges and devise ways to get around them - ahead of time – putting in place some contingency actions from the start.

Figure out a way to get feedback on progress.

When you can see that you are moving in the right direction towards your goal you tend to want to keep going. One reason why gyms can be helpful when setting goals around fitness is that the equipment can be programmed to provide immediate feedback on how you are going. When the progress is there right in front of you staying on track is easier.

Involve others in your journey toward your goal.

We are relational beings and doing things with others and being held accountable by others are good ways to reinforce our commitment to what we want to achieve.

Try a few of these and see if they don’t go a long way towards helping your goals stick!