.png)
In January I failed to meet my work and business goals.
I set myself far too ambitious a challenge and tried to launch myself straight into the middle of things rather than starting at the beginning.
One of my aims this year is to grow my email subscriber list so naturally that was a key focus, I was aiming to add 10 new subscribers in the first month.
It might not seem too much of a stretch but if I had given it proper thought I would have realised how overwhelmed I felt just thinking about it. It’s no surprise that I didn’t follow through. I had zero new subscribers.
So for February, I started again. I had the same goals as before but I redefined what success meant so that I started much smaller and then built up from there.
My new goal is to add just one new subscriber. Then once I’ve done that I’ll look to add one more, and then another. One at a time.
How we view success is often influenced by someone else’s definition of it. We adopt the same goals and later feel bad when we perceive that we haven’t measured up to the external standard.
When starting up my business, I saw other business owners (who were clearly all way ahead of me in their own journey) with seemingly perfect email marketing strategies, social media accounts that they posted to daily, weekly newsletters and blog posts that churned out like clockwork and a whole host of client testimonials from happy customers singing their praises.
I saw all of this and panicked, believing I needed to have all of these things too and right now!
I set up my own website and social media account to begin posting without really having any idea what I was doing. I struggled trying to think of different weekly blog posts I could write. What should I include in my newsletter that week? And where were those clients I was doing all of this to attract?!
At that time, success for me looked like doing everything that everyone else was doing. To me, they all looked successful and so I needed to be doing exactly what they were doing too.
Except trying to live up to their standards wasn't realistic or a fair expectation to have. I was starting way further down the ladder and my definition of success and goals needed to reflect that.
So, what do you want success to look like for you?
For me, it’s now reaching out to talk to just one new person.
Like the saying, ‘You have to slow down to speed up,’ aim for less and do less at first so that eventually you can do more, quicker.
Maybe eating clean actually looks like having just one extra portion of vegetables every day.
Maybe finding better work life balance looks like getting up 5 minutes earlier to meditate.
Define what success means to you on your own terms. You get to decide.
If, like me, you struggle to be patient when working towards what you want, redefining success will help you to stack up smaller wins more quickly, build confidence and motivation and ultimately get you there faster.