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Who do you want to be a year from now?
It’s an uncomfortable question to answer. Since our youngest age, we’ve been asked about what we want to be when we grow up, what we want to achieve, but never who we want to be. That’s why it's a powerful question in my coaching toolkit. Defining who you want to be and the mindset that comes with it is the secret to setting yourself up for success.
Behind every goal, lies a not-so-hidden mindset desire. You hope it will make you feel a certain way, and help you develop a way of thinking or behaving. It’s your intrinsic motivation. Creating mindset goals is a way to tap into that motivation.
Define who you want to become, create mindset goals, and watch yourself achieve it all in 2024.
Why mindset goals?
Let’s take an example of a common New Year resolution: run a half marathon.
Depending on the individual, the reason, or subconscious desire behind wanting to reach that goal could be building self-confidence, resilience, or nurturing an athlete mindset.
If you set the half marathon as the end goal, you’ll work towards it all year, but you’ll only achieve it on the day of the race. Let’s say you break your leg whilst training. You can’t run the race anymore. It impacts your self-image and your intrinsic goal. You fail twice. Working on your self-confidence, or resilience is something you can start implementing now, and reach much faster.
If you make mindset your end goal, running a half marathon becomes a means. If anything happens, you can redirect. It allows you to focus on what you actually want. Have you ever felt unsatisfied despite reaching your goals?
The reason for it is simple, you’ve confused mean and end goal, which led you to focus on the mean only. You assumed reaching the goal would make you feel a certain way, and it didn’t. You could run the half marathon and still lack confidence. Mindset goals allow you to focus on what matters.
Audit where you’re at.
Think about your mindset right now, and how it has evolved in the past 12 months. You can use the following questions to reflect:
How do you feel about yourself and your life right now?
How did you feel a year ago?
What has changed?
What habits and behaviors have you put in place? Which are serving you, which aren’t?
How do you currently approach setbacks and challenges?
What do you like about yourself?
What do you dislike, or feel ashamed of?
Look into the future
Now that you have a better idea of your starting point, define where you want to go. Remember, your mindset is defined by a set of beliefs, behaviors, and ways of thinking.
Picture yourself a year from now.
What’s your mindset, what’s your predominant feeling?
Are you relaxed, are you challenged, are you dynamic?
What kind of person and behavior do you want to embody?
What do you want people to feel around you?
How do you want to “feel” about yourself and about your life?
How will you talk about yourself and your life in a year?
What characteristics have you developed, and strengthened?
What characteristics have you worked on and improved? What are you proud of?
Any specific beliefs or thought patterns you'd like to work on or change?
Think about what takes energy from you
Reflect on times you react instead of responding
What does not serve you anymore?
What beliefs or patterns do you know will get in the way of your next goal?
How do you want to approach setbacks and challenges?
How is it different from now?
What do you need to cultivate or nurture to be able to make that switch
Who else approaches challenges in that way?
How do they do it? What characteristics do they have?
Based on your answer, define three mindset goals.
If you’re struggling to project who you want to be in a year, you can start from the goals you’ve already set.
Ask yourself why you want them
How do you imagine achieving these will make you feel?
What will reaching these goals say about you and your behaviors?
Make it happen
Setting mindset goals can feel overwhelming as they’re less tangible. That’s why we naturally go towards smaller, more concrete goals. Setting these big, ambitious goals to rewire the way we think, and behave is a lot and there are many ways to go about it.
So to pave the way, let’s reverse engineer.
In each area of your life, define key milestones that will help you nurture your 2024 mindset. Instead of choosing one way to your goal, you’re opening many roads to increase your chances of success, and hopefully enjoyment. Don’t wait for the milestones to make it happen though. Now that you know what you’re working towards, simply ask yourself:
What’s one action I can take today to nurture this mindset?
Then, watch the magic happen.
Orianne Gambino is a leadership and mindset coach with years of corporate experience working side by side with business owners and leaders. Passionate about the human mind, she supports leaders in playing bigger and thriving in transitions.