We are reaching the end of the year. Time to reflect. Did you reach all your New Year’s Resolutions? Also, time to look ahead. What are your goals for the next year?
However, you can also use this time of the year to focus on something different or let us say on someone different. You might want to reserve some time to focus on other people. Probably, you know a friend or coworker that is stuck with her goal. Quite often a problem looks much easier from the outside. Use the holiday season to help a friend or family member with their goals.
How Can You Help a Friend with Their Goals?
Sure, if you have family and friends you probably also talk about each other’s plans and goals. But, how deep do you really go? How helpful are these discussions? Sharing your goals selectively with people who want you to succeed increases your chances to actually achieve them. Of course, people can also hold you back. For example, if you tell your mom at the dinner table that you are going to quit your save job as a lawyer to become a musician instead, she might try to convince you otherwise. And she surly has the best intentions for you.
Next time you meet with a friend or family member try to talk about her goals for the next year. Offer your genuine support. How can you do this? Here come some ideas that might help you to help your friend with their goals.
Listen
Avoid naysayers and avoid being a naysayer. Listen to your friend’s plans without judging. Ask questions to really understand her motivation. Also, try to help your friend to understand her motivation. Why is this goal important for her? Besides the goals for the coming year, also try to talk about her life goals.
Listening alone already helps a lot.
Plan
Does she have a plan already? What are the next steps? No need to do an entire coaching session here. Just to ask about the next steps and to point out that a plan might help can be sufficient here. You do not want to scare your friend or behave like a smart alec teacher. If she wants you to support her with a plan, you can do so of course.
Resources
Now that you know your friend’s goal, you might already have some ideas how you can help her. Maybe you have been in a similar situation yourself, so you can share your experience. Maybe, you know someone from your network who can help. Or, you have some other resources you can share, for example a book you can lend.
Since you are reading this article you might already have some knowledge about goal setting. Share it with your friend. You also might want to point her to the resources on our website at VidaGoals.com or to our free goal-setting app VidaGoals.
Reminders
This is a strong one, especially for you as a helping friend. When you meet your friend later in the year, ask her about her goal and how it is going on. She will feel even more accountable then. You can also give her a call from time to time or (if you like) you can schedule regular review sessions. This does not need to cost a lot of time, but it is a very powerful motivator.
Obstacles
If there are no obstacles on the way towards your goal, your goal is not big enough. Offer your friend to call you whenever she needs some help.
Of course, the idea is not that you reach her goal for her. The idea is to point her into the right direction. There might be some people who try to take a little bit too much of your time. So, this is definitely a thin line and you can and should set certain boundaries on how far your support can go.
Your Goals
Talk about your goals too. This will make your friend more comfortable and maybe she will be able to help you too.
You do not need to invest a lot of time in this. Sometimes, it just helps if you know there is someone you can ask for help and someone who listens. If you do not see each other too often, you might want to offer your friend to send you a message if she needs help. You can then get back to her whenever it is suitable for you.
It might happen that her goal is something you cannot support for whatever reason. If so, tell her honestly that you are not the right person for this.
If your friend says she has no goals, you might want to question that and mention some of the benefits of having goals.
What Do We Give Back?
Of course, we would like to set a good example and give something back as well. We just finished our goal-setting eBook “Goal Setting for a Fulfilled Life – How to Achieve Your Biggest Goals While You Are Busy Doing Other Things?” with tips, tricks and guidance, all about finding and reaching your goals.
We give this eBook away for free, no charge, no registration, no strings attached. Just download the eBook as PDF or ePub and check it out. And, of course, you can forward it to your family, friends and coworkers as well.
Oh, and your feedback is most welcome. Just let us know what you think, what you like or dislike and what else you might want to see in the book: Contact Us.
And We Got Something as Well
Right after publishing this article someone from ConsciousEd reached out and recommended their article about Life Purpose. This article has some valuable information about life purpose and life goals. Definitely a good read for the end of the year. ConsciousEd is a not-for-profit educational wiki that aims to teach people important skills they didn’t learn in school.