I believe that the New Year is one of the most powerful times of the year to start positive change. So if you have been struggling with your health and sleep in 2020 this is a great opportunity to change things for the better!

It is often overlooked that good sleep is the foundation of nearly all aspects that are important for our well being. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about our immune system, emotional balance, cell recreation, high energy levels, or nearly any other aspect of our health. Sleep is one of the main drivers.

And we all want to feel better and healthier, right? But we might not know how to get there. How to reach our sleep goal.

By setting goals in the right way these things suddenly get so much clearer. They just fall into place and we feel that we get propelled towards our sleep and great health.

Businesses Approach Of Setting Goals

Typically in businesses goals get defined by a system or framework called

S.pecific
M.easurable
A.ctionalble
R.ealistic
T.imebound

Describing a goal keeping all of the above aspects in mind helps to create clearly defined goals. Though the S.M.A.R.T system is great when it comes to defining goals in general there is one majorly important thing missing. This is an aspect that gets covered in-depth when it comes to personal development, so let’s have a look at this together.

Personal Development Approach Of Setting Goals

The secret sauce that gets added in the personal development space is E.motions.

A great salesman once said that if you sell things solely using rational arguments you are going to raise skinny kids…

We are all driven by emotions. So we want to add strong, positive emotions when it comes to our goals. Injecting good emotions can be done by being S.pecific about the purpose of why we want to improve our sleep and health.

This may be because it will enable you to be a better parent. Or you might want to raise your productivity levels to earn more money. Maybe you want to use your higher energy levels to maintain deeper relationships? The only thing that matters here is that it is an emotional reason for YOU!

Writing Your Goal Card

So, this was the theory, but how will this help us to get our sleep back? Become healthy again? The most powerful way I know is to do so is to create your personal goal card.
To do so you only need a sheet of paper and a pen and then you are going to create your future. A future is full of sleep and health. You might want to pretend that anything you write on this sheet of paper will become true – because odds are that this is exactly what will happen.

There are four areas that you won’t get clear about writing your goal card:

1. My Goal


This is one short sentence that frames your goal. E.g. “I Feel energized when I get out of bed” or “I am a superb sleeper”.



2. The Details


Write down 2-5 sentences that describe your goal and motivation specifically. You want to write these sentences in the present tense and avoid negotiations. As an example instead of writing “I do not want to be sick in 2021” you want to write something like “I feel extremely healthy every single day of 2021”.
Don’t forget to include at least one sentence about your big WHY (motivation) you need to achieve this.



3. Achievement Date


You want to define a specific date on which you will have achieved your goal. This should feel realistic to you. In the beginning, it might feel a bit strange to fill in a date as you might not have any experience with how long it will take you to achieve your goal. Listen to your gut feeling here. You may also want to research the internet to find out how long others took to reach a similar goal.



4. Plan


Write down a couple of things that will ensure that you will be taking the right actions to move towards your goal. You neither want to get nitty-gritty here nor land in the clouds of vague ideas. Something like “I will do everything to improve my sleep“ may be too cloudy and “On Monday I will go to bed without watching talk shows until late hours” is too nitty-gritty. The magic happens between those layers.

Covering the above aspects will reward you with a goal card that has the power to align your mind with your actions. If you are looking for quick sleep success this is your path! Only when your mind starts to align with your actions does belief turn into real-life results.

Following the above four steps will also ensure that you get the best from the S.M.A.R.T. and the personal development world.

What now?

Now you want to reap the reward for taking your time to create your goal card. The way to do so is to imprint the content into your mind. The way to do so is simple. The only thing you have to bring to the table is a bit of self-discipline.

Read your goal card twice a day. First thing in the morning and last thing at night. That’s all!

Congratulations – you just set yourself up for great sleep in 2021.

In the next week’s I’ll walk you through the practical aspects of moving towards high-quality sleep.

Take care and sleep well

Michael Hildebrandt