Stress-Free Goal Setting: Keep Your Body in Mind

In today’s episode, we look at some common ways we respond to goal setting, and focus more on how our BODY respond to Goal Setting. Do you get overwhelmed by thinking about the year to come?  When you have these thoughts, how does your body respond?

The process of setting goals can be stressful on the body, but these signals are often dismissed or ignored, and we end up making the plans the same way we always have.

If this happens to you, try to notice how your body responds to this type of stressful stimulus.

When you plan which goals to focus on, do you:

• Get fidgety?
• Squint your eyes?
• Bite down hard?
• Hold you breath?
• Avoid the goal planning process all together?
• Procrastinate doing the few things that will push you forward in your business, sport, relationship or health?

One of my Coaches & mentors, Selena Soo, had some great advice at our last mastermind: Do less, but better! This is one of my mottos for 2023, and I’m adding it to everything.  

Make this year’s goal setting less stressful by doing less, but doing it better!

3 Ways to Make Your Goal Setting Less Stressful on Your Body:

1. Include your body in the planning process
2. Notice if your body responds to certain plans & modify the plan
3. Develop a “Self-Awareness Routine” 

1. Include your body in the planning process

Move your body before, during and after you start planning.  Also, plan to be hydrated, well fed and rested when you have a big planning session, test or other event coming up.

Just like an elite athlete preparing for a big event, consider how your body can make or break how effective & efficient you can be.

• Stretch while standing or sitting
• Roll your shoulders forward and back
• Take some deep breaths
• Rotate your wrists & ankles
• Hold onto a couch, chair, counter, lean back to stretch your back

2. Notice if Your Body Responds to Certain Plans & Modify the Plan

An art of “listening” to our body, to the intuition it has to share with us, has been ignored for a long time.  But, consider it a long lost way of communicating with ourselves that we are desperately missing. 

How do you listen to your body?  

There are many ways and each person has unique ways their body communicates, but here are a few basic ways to start listening while you are goal planning:

• Does your stomach get tight with certain goals
• Do certain goals or ideas create a reaction? (some of these you don’t even recognize as a reaction anymore…)
• Do you pace?
• Do you avoid certain goals or conversations about these goals? (money? starting a business? travel? weight loss?)

3. Develop a “Self-Awareness Routine”

There are morning routines, exercise routines, but try to create a “self-awareness routine”.

• Notice your body, how it is when it’s “happy”, “calm”, “angry”, “anxious”
• What does your body do for each category?
• Now, create a routine of noticing: 
  • Stop & be still
  • What do you notice in your hands, face, gut, chest?
  • Can you match a thought with a body reaction?