13. How to set the right goals

Achieving goals could sometimes be challenging. And if you don’t find out the best way to make a plan that works for you, you might never reach them.

Are you a list maker? Do you like to set goals and have plans for all the things you want? Well, whether you do or you don’t, it’s definitely worth a try if you have something that you really want to achieve.

If you want to get things done, instead of just keeping them on your list, setting goals can really help you prioritize and focus on doing the right things and not just staying busy without a clear direction of where you are going. What are you achieving with all this busyness?

Having goals is a great way to keep you motivated. And to get clarity around what you really want. If you have big dreams and a lot of ideas, clear goals will keep you on track to reach those dreams instead of just having them on paper.

Having a plan and setting goals will give you structure and focus. You’ll always know what to work on because you know what you want to achieve. And when you have structure, it’s so much easier to avoid all your bad habits. Sometimes it’s the most important tasks that you procrastinate on. And when you see those tasks as part of a bigger picture, they’ll become easier to complete.

When you set goals daily, weekly or monthly goals, tasks become more manageable, and you’re more likely to complete them. Other times you keep yourself busy doing all the things. But if you create a plan based on your goals, you can avoid a lot of the busyness.

How to set goals that actually get you to the place you want to be?

First, you have to figure out what your dreams are and how you want your life to be. If you start by creating a vision board, that might be very helpful, especially if you’re a visual person, then take the thing that matters most, the thing that seems the most life-changing, and make that your main goal, this can be something that you want to achieve in  3 – 5 – 10 years,

Once you have that in place, you can make short-term goals, which again turn into a plan of all the things that you need to get done to get to where you want to be. It might seem complicated, but you can download the goal-setting PDF, If you want, it might make it a little bit easier.

The goals you set yourself should be SMART:

S – Specific: you make it clear exactly what you want to achieve and how to do it. e.g., Book a certain amount of weddings.

M – Measurable: It can be quantified. e.g., the specific number of weddings you want to book in a year, let’s say 30 weddings in 2022.

A – Attainable: It’s achievable and realistic. You want to pick a number of weddings that are realistic according to your past experiences. e.g., you are targeting 30 weddings because it’s realistic last year you did 20 weddings, so increasing the number by ten, that can absolutely be done.

R – Relevant and rewarding: It’s relevant to you and it matters to you!. There’s no point in having a goal if you don’t really want it to happen, and booking 30 weddings for you is something that means that you can make a living from photography at something that would really fuel you creatively.

T – Time-bound: you set yourself a deadline. e.g., by the end of 2022, you have booked 30 weddings for 2023

Then, you have it! it’s specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and rewarding, and it’s time-bound. Of course, this is just an example, Your goals can be anything you want.

Your mindset and your thoughts are crucial to reaching your goals. You will be more likely to achieve your goals if you have a growth mindset and stay positive rather than think something is impossible to complete.
Check out episode nine, where we talk in-depth about the power of your mind and the importance of your thoughts and mindset to determine what choices you make.

Listen to episode 9, “The power of you mind”

Episode 9

If you also do these things the chance of you actually reaching your goals will greatly increase:

• You’re more likely to succeed if the goal is formulated as something you’ll do, rather than something you won’t do, so make sure the goal is positive.
• Be precise in how you word your goal. What do you want to accomplish, and why? Use a whole sentence and not just a word.
• Prioritize your goals. Think about what’s most important. And in what order it makes sense to complete them.
• Write your goals down. Always!
• Celebrate all the goals you reach! It tells your brain you’ve done something positive and increases your motivation.
• Find yourself an accountability buddy. Tell a friend what you want to do- someone you check in with (or better yet someone who checks in with you) who makes sure you stick to your plan.

Without exception, a great way to reach your goals is having a coach, a mentor who can give you direction and help you plan, prioritize and reach your goals successfully. Check out the Sustainable Photography mentor program where we can plan a business strategy focused on who you ARE and the foundation of your business, you will receive action steps broken down in the workbooks and pre-recorded videos, so you don’t need to have anything figured along with so much more resources divided into seven modules to get your business to the next level!

Bonus tip: To make sure the goal motivates you, you should write down why it’s valuable and important to you. Imagine you’re sharing your goal with someone else and you have to convince them that it’s a good goal. Hang this on your wall so you can easily read it whenever you doubt yourself or you lose faith in reaching the goal.

The big goals!

For the “big things” that you want to achieve, like your income and your client booking goals, set 3 goals :

• Small goal where you reach the minimum you need.
• Medium goal that makes you happy.
• Super high goal that you think is out of reach but would love to hit.

Imagine there’s a way you can rid yourself of a lot of the frustration and uncertainty you have in your photography business. If you set goals, and you create a plan, you can do so much in order to stay on path and see that as possible to do or you want to do goals or the things that you want to achieve. And the plan is how you can get there.

Now that you have set your goals

You can create a plan. Imagine yourself having reached your main goal five years from now.

• How much are you making?
• Who are your clients?
• How much are you working?
• How does your life look? 
• Where do you live?

Work your way backward from a greater vision or long-term goal for your business to smaller monthly goals that are related to your long-term goal. What do you have to do this month to get one step closer to where you want to be in five years.

Try to keep your tasks small, break them down into little pieces. They should take less than an hour to complete. And always make sure that you focus on just one at a time. Always write your plan and your tasks down. It makes it so much easier to keep track of and complete. And not to mention you can cross them out once you’re done!

Always celebrate the goals that you reach and start your day by reviewing your goals and your daily to-do list. have three main tasks that you want to complete and don’t start looking at the rest of the list until these are done.

There you go. So just by using your mind to envision your future, you can create a plan filled with simple actionable steps that will get you to the place you actually want to be. Just try for yourself and see how simple it is!

Don’t forget to download the goal-setting workbook to make goal setting easier!

Want more?

Follow me on Instagram

Join the Facebook group

Learn more about the Sustainable Photography Program