Happy New Year! As we enter 2022, January often serves as a time to reflect on the year behind us, and set goals for the year ahead. I hit the blog this time last year to talk about setting goals and creating plans to crush them, but what if that’s not enough?

Sure, many of us like to start off the new year with goals or resolutions — new things to learn or accomplish. Habits to change and new adventures to be experienced. But once we’ve set the goal, how do you successfully crush that goal this coming year?

Here are my top 5 tips to be a 2022 #goalcrusher:

Get real about your goals

That’s right, you need to not just set a goal but you need to OWN that goal. Write it down, create a vision board with it incorporated, and reflect on the goal often so that it stays top of mind. Get real about what it’s going to take to accomplish and make adjustments to your goal if necessary. And I don’t mean to completely downgrade your goal so it takes you nothing to achieve, but rather if it’s a bigger goal that can’t realistically be accomplished in a year, break it down. For example, let’s say you have the goal of “financial freedom”. That may not happen in 2022, but you can take major inroads on the path, so adjust your goal to be “create a habit of saving/investing $1000 monthly”.

Get real about yourself

Once you’ve got your pretty goals all ready to tackle, you have to look inward and ask yourself what barriers may arise on your path to goal crushing? And what is your plan to overcome those barriers? Knowing yourself, your own habits and mindset around specific goals can help you get ahead of those challenges to ensure that you’re not taken completely off course.

Tell someone about it

Having an accountability partner in your goal crushing can be super effective. This can be someone who’s immediately affected or participating in achieving your goal or can be someone on the sidelines cheering you on every step of the way. Wherever your person fits in with your goal, have someone to help keep you accountable, and give a pep talk or help steer you back to your goal path if needed.

Celebrate the small wins

This is one of my favourite tips because it makes goal crushing that much more fun. Celebrating the small milestones along the way can help keep you motivated and recognize how far you’ve come so far. This could be a small trinket or treat, doesn’t need to be a huge investment, but something meaningful to you.

Rinse and repeat

To create good goal-crushing habits, find what works for you and rinse and repeat. Don’t go back to old methods you’ve tried and failed at. if you know what you need to be successful in reaching a goal, you need not look any further to what’s popular or has worked for others. If you don’t know what works for you, then get real about yourself (again) and determine how you’ll best accomplish that goal. Maybe you’re on a fitness journey, but know that you’d rather work out alone at home than at the gym. Don’t run out and buy a gym membership you’ll never use. Use your own self-awareness to create a path to success.

Need some help in setting and achieving your financial goals in 2022? Let me know!