Success comes in many forms and manifests in various ways. Despite who you are, where you are from, or what you do, I believe the most accurate definition of success was quoted by Bob Dylan who penned; “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.”
When I came to Australia, I learnt english by watching pretty much every Disney movie that was released at the time. Whilst life can be full of amazing people and beautiful moments, it wasn’t long until I realised that life is not fairytale, and unfortunately dreams don’t come true unless you work at them. Fairytales did however, instil within me the beautiful belief that you can live ‘happily ever after’, as well as a vivid imagination to dream up incredible possibilities with positive outcomes.
Whilst I’ve spent the year inspiring you to make better nutritional choices, as an avid goal setter, I want to help you start your life now with a big BANG by sharing simple and effective goal-setting strategies you can refer to every new year.
1. The first thing you will need is to be in a creative and inspired space. Depending on your personality, it may be that you need a quiet space, for me, it means I need to be in a room with a lot of energy with headphones. Define this as you will, but it will require you to put your phone on silent and to set aside one or two hours completely for this exercise.
2. Grab yourself a few pieces of paper and pen. Write down things you want to do, see, learn or experience. Anything and everything! Allow yourself and your mind to GO WILD! Write until you hit a black spot in your mind. Just when you think you can’t think of anymore, keep going. Maybe expand on some of the goals you’ve already written, just keep going. I want you write through 2 blank spots – that’s how you know you’ve squeezed out all that juice. Remember “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” C.S Lewis (Author of Alice in Wonderland).
3. Go through and allocate when you would like to accomplish them. Divide them into 1 year, 2 years, 5 years and 10 years. Put aside all your goals except for all that you’ve allocated to be accomplished in the next year. Pick the two or three most inspiring goals that really resonate with you. A major key in accomplishing your goals is laser focus.
4. This step is the most important part as it requires you to refine your goals by following this S.M.A.R.T. formula. Work through one goal at a time, and take them through this process, workshopping them with each question.
Specific: Goals should be simplistically written and clearly define what you are going to do. Expand your goal by specifiying and to what degree it will be accomplished.
Example: “I want to learn to speak Spanish” turns into; “I want to learn Spanish and master it so well that I would be able to navigate my way around a Spanish-speaking country.”
Measurable: Goals should be measurable. The best way to do this is to break it down into smaller achievable goals.
Example: “First, I would like to know how to greet people and introduce myself. Once I’ve mastered that, I would like to have learnt how to count, names of food, and how to form small conversational sentences. Then I will challenge myself to read a children’s book in Spanish to completion and with confidence.” You’ll be speaking Spanish in no time!
Achievable: Goals should be achievable; they should stretch you slightly so you feel challenged. Now that you’ve made them measurable, so you can constantly check in with you progress, take each of those smaller stepping stones and allocate a date to them.
Example: “I’m going to set aside 2hrs a week dedicated to learning Spanish. 1hr on Tuesday, and 1hr on Thursday. In this weeks 2hrs, I’m going to focus on how to introduce myself, and different greetings. Next week, I’m going to work on responding to greetings and practice my speaking with a Spanish speaker.”
Results-Based: If you have a difficult or uninspired (but important) goal, your reason WHY will be your motivator. Define a compelling reason for why you would like to accomplish this goal so that it will pull you towards accomplishing it.
Example: “I want to learn Spanish and master it so well that I would be able to navigate my way around a Spanish-speaking country, because I’ve always dreamt of travelling to Peru and doing a 4 day trek through the Andes to Machu Picchu.”
Time based: You need to create a practical sense of urgency to your goals by giving them a timeframe. Creating a sense of tension will help you naturally focus on achieving your goal, and staying on track.
Example: “I want to learn Spanish and master it so well that I would be able to navigate my way around a Spanish-speaking country, because I’ve just booked a trip to Peru for December the 16th 2026 for 5 weeks!”
This is how you make dreams come true. In Cinderella, the Prince was completely underrated, because although she was the start of the story, she was a damsel in distress waiting to be rescued, whilst the Prince was an assertive go getter. He fell in love, he knew what he wanted, and he let nothing get in the way when finding the love of his life. If you applied the same passion to your goals as the prince did when he scoured the kingdom to find his true love, imagine the incredible things you could achieve! Dream up the possibilities, decided what you want, and make it happen. Be the hero of your own story.
How are you defining your happily ever after? What are your goals for 2026? Tell us below!…
