Setting and reaching goals is not only imperative for a successful business, but it’s important for maintaining self-worth and motivation throughout the business-building process. Failing to reach goals that have been set can lead to a path of self-sabotaging behavior. Missing our goals or setting difficult-to-follow routines erodes the trust we feel in ourselves to keep building through the drops.
The foundation of every successful business is the trust the business owner holds in themself.
Owning or building a business, and its associated success, is often connected deeply with our personal value or self worth. This connection can create a sense of urgency in accessing certain achievements, leading to productivity-based, versus intuition-based, goals and routines.
A realistic goal takes into account your energy reserves as well as your motivation. To set realistic goals, we need to know what tasks are involved to achieve the goal and what energy is available, at any given time, to complete the tasks. Realistic goals are achieved with intuitive routines.
What’s an intuitive routine?
Intuition is the way our feelings guide us to decision making. Developing business practices from a place of intuition means incorporating feelings and emotions into the goals and tasks. An intuitive routine addresses how the goals and subsequent tasks make you feel. Assigning these tasks into routines, intuitively, requires knowing your moods, and which mood is readily able to absorb the feelings associated with the necessary business task.
To set an intuitive routine, start by looking at your goal or anticipated outcome, break down the tasks to accomplish the goal, and then address how you feel about completing each task.
Goal setting usually includes writing one large goal, breaking it out into smaller goals, and then listing the tasks necessary to accomplish each small goal. Intellectually this is a sound framework but where most people struggle is the execution of the tasks throughout varying emotional states.
Getting to know your mood cycles gives you a clear picture of your energy reserve patterns. This is where you can align how you feel about the goals and tasks with your mood patterns.
Working with Evolving Moods
Everyone has a cycle of moods they evolve through on a fairly consistent basis. Most of our moods happen on a repetitive cycle as a result of the patterns of our lives, whether they’re driven by work schedules or family needs. You’ll find general patterns of high energy and low energy in accordance with your overall lifestyle. These energy periods, or moods, are clusters of feelings we’ve come to identify as familiar.
An anxious mood may include overthinking and worrying about things you can’t control. An empowered mood may include motivation and feelings of hope and faith. You’ll notice at different times in your schedule, your mood shifts based on what you feel you’ve accomplished, in accordance with your routine, and what you feel you still need to accomplish.
Getting to know your mood cycles gives you an opportunity to operate intentionally within the framework of any given moment.
Sorting Your Tasks Intuitively
Give yourself a week to monitor your mood cycles. Identify when you are active, energized and motivated. Take note of when you’re run down, defeated, and hopeless. Then organize your tasks according to when they’re the least disruptive to your moods.
Keep non-negotiables, or taks with big time commitments, in your high-energy spaces, which usually consist of mornings, Mondays, beginning of the month, and beginning of the quarter. Put repetitive, monotonous, tasks in your low-energy areas, such as evenings, after lunch, or Fridays.
Keep a list of high-energy and low-energy tasks. Mood shifts happen unexpectedly so it’s helpful to get ahead of your to-do list when you have a sudden burst of motivation. It’s also helpful to keep things moving along during the dips, as you may still find things to check off the low-energy list while you’re recovering from a disruption.
Setting Realistic Goals
Allow your moods to guide you into realistic goal setting. Moods impact productivity and when we’re unaware of our mood cycles, it can lead to self-sabotaging behaviors. Repeatedly setting goals that aren’t reached will affect self-trust. When business owners repeatedly don’t reach their goals, they often begin to question if they have the ability to run their business at all.
The solution, to this lack of confidence, is in adjusting timeline expectations or efforts. An intuitive routine allows you to identify your areas of motivation and your areas of apathy and then place tasks accordingly, it further gives you a realistic picture of how often you’re able to complete certain tasks so that you can project realistic goals.
Reconnect with the Purpose of Your Business
When setting goals and routines, it’s also helpful to align them with your overall purpose. Every person has their own individual journey and purpose in life. Our business is one piece of our service. Being disconnected from larger business goals, smaller goals, or tasks, can indicate that your business is out of alignment with your life’s purpose.
Take time to ask yourself what your experiences have drawn out of you and how your business is a manifestation of your greater qualities and unique attributes.
There are always ways to redirect your business goals to serve your overall life. Tapping into your own purpose will give you a clearer picture of how to manage your business intuitively.
5 Steps to Setting Your Own Intuitive Routine
To set your own Intuitive Routine to reach your goals faster, follow these steps:
- Write out your big goals, small goals, and list the tasks necessary to achieve each.
- Sort tasks into high-energy and low-energy.
- Monitor and take note of your mood cycles for a week.
- Assign tasks according to your mood cycles.
- Reconnect with your purpose to keep your business in alignment with your overall life purpose.
As with all routine-setting practices, it takes time, and a willingness to adjust, to find what feels right. Working from a holistic approach, incorporating the emotional aspects of yourself and your overall life’s purpose, will set you on the path to building a purposeful and sustainable business.
Intuitive routines take time but more importantly, they take self-compassion. Coming from a place of compassion for yourself and for the idea behind your business, and identifying what your lifestyle supports, gives you the opportunity to use your business as a fulfilling and supportive endeavor.
This is a blog post contributed by Joscelyn Kate, a Master Mindfulness Practitioner, Trauma-Informed Yoga Instructor, and Certified Ritual guide who helps people let go of toxic habits, situations, and relationships so they can recenter in their purpose. Learn more at TheMiddayLatte.com.
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