I’ll let you into a little secret - I don’t really set goals. Instead I prefer to work towards a vision and add things in along the way, being relaxed about how I get there. It’s how I create my lesson plans, how I cook and how I write music and articles.

Goals need an individualised approach. In the same way that I don’t believe there’s a one-size fits all approach to coaching. What works for me won’t work for everyone and this is the beauty of setting a course and working towards it.

I had some really interesting feedback when I mentioned that I was writing an article about ‘goals’ on my social media. Seems the word ‘goals’ brings up a lot of stuff..

The Cambridge Dictionary has the following definitions for the word goal:

• An aim or purpose;

• A purpose, or something that you want to achieve.

SMART Goals

In my corporate life I learned that goals need to be SMART:

• Specific. Your goal must be clear and well defined. ...

• Measurable. Include precise amounts, dates, and so on in your goals so you can measure your degree of success. ...

• Attainable. Make sure that it's possible to achieve the goals you set. ...

• Relevant. To what you are doing.

• Time-Bound. When the goal will be achieved.

What does ‘with a Holistic Twist’ mean?

I’m trained as a Holistic Coach and like to explore beyond literal and logical thinking, and get curious about the more subtle drivers and motivations that often ‘run the show’ for us unconsciously. By doing this we can look at programming, our conditioning and at what things really mean to us and why.

The Vision Must be Yours

Nine or ten years ago when yoga was starting to inspire change and growth in me, I remember talking to a teacher of mine who’s now a dear friend, and I learned quickly that according to them, I wouldn’t be able make a living teaching yoga. This echoed my parents voices when I wanted to be a musician in my teenage years - ‘You will never make money doing this, you need a proper job’.. Although I had a dream of teaching full time, the desire wasn’t solely to make a living teaching yoga. I wanted to work with people, like me, and offer support on their own journeys of self discovery. I wanted to be involved in community, using tools that had helped me and offer them to others to see if they could be useful. I had a vision - I was able to clearly see myself walking around as a full time teacher, talking to people about this and doing the work full time. I could literally see it happening. Tools that helped bring me clarity were yoga, breathwork and meditation. Being mentored and coached allowed me to explore the roots of any mindset challenges. I became very Specific.

One day during the figuring-things-out-along-the-way part of the process, David, my mentor said to me: “Andy it seems to me that you can either bite the bullet and leave work now, or you can take your time and gradually get your income levels the same and then step into teaching full time. Which one will you do?” I took the slower, meandering route and I learned so much about teaching while still working full time. Three years later, following a near-fatal car accident and cancelling a teacher training, my visualisation came to fruition and I wrote the email (I had seen clearly in my imagination) to my boss, handing in my notice, and walked into full time teaching.

I found that the process of leaving full time employment and going out on my own, was triggering for others and I was getting a lot of projections from friends and family about what I should do, whether it would work and what could go wrong. Our opinions and projections are often rooted in old conditioning and these biases are explored in my Motivation article. Brené Brown the Shame & Vulnerability Researcher and Professor was a great inspiration at this time for me, particularly with her ‘Man in the Arena’ dialogue. I’ve found a 3 minute excerpt which you can watch that HERE for inspiration. (If you aren’t familiar with Brené’s work, it’s well worth exploring her TED talks, multiple podcasts she’s featured on and her writing.)

I just believed that I needed to keep taking small steps and eventually I would get there - even though I didn’t know when. I learned to pause and take stock of my progress and this is where journaling really helped me, alongside discovering an amazing mindset coach called Eileen, who continues to guide me in the art of Holistic Coaching. I learned to Measure using my journal and my gut, to figure out if I was on track, or correct course (with support if needed) to get my back on track. At times I needed support!

All along I believed this vision was Attainable, and saw evidence all around me because I knew teachers who were able to sustain themselves. I just had to give myself time to figure out how to make it work for me. Teaching full time was trial and error. As a small business owner what I know to be true is that it’s often trial and error.

My vision MEANT a huge amount to me - it was Relevant to my core values and what I felt my purpose was. David often reminded me when I got stuck on “but how will I pay the bills?” that if I focused on the money, or an outcome, I would trip myself up. I needed to stay focused on how I would use my skills and life experience to support others, and trust that I would find a way to live and pay the bills. And it was true. It is true.

When we learn to detach our goals from expectations and outcomes we are onto something.. Goals, for me, connect us to our hearts and passions.

To check if a goal is really relevant to you, you might ask yourself these questions:

• What does this goal mean to me?

• How will this goal help others?

• What is the ultimate purpose of this goal and how will it help me in my life?

• What will this enable me to do more of?

From the perspective of Time-Bound, leaving work to teach full time was somewhat in the distance when I created the vision. It was more “Within the next couple of years”. Life often has a different route for us than we might have imagined, so in my experience, we need to allow for diversions and delays. I mentioned the car accident earlier was an example for me. A current example is Covid-19…

Building uncertainty and flexibility into our goals allows us to be ok with a diversion that wasn’t planned.

How do you feel about committing to a goal without it being tied to an outcome or expectation?

• How do you feel when you read this?

• Will we be able to say we are successful if there’s not a clear outcome by a certain time?

• Say we don’t lose the weight by August, or we don’t win that tennis competition in 2020, or get X amount of £/$ of business this quarter… Does that make us failures?

Trust we must. Be flexible we must.

Developing what I call Compassionate Accountability is a holistic process of self reflection that allows us to explore our inner environment. In Sanskrit one of the word Svadhyaya’s meanings is to ‘study the self’. Our motivations, fears, dreams, reactive behaviours and habits - that may be helping or hindering us reaching our goals. It’s also a process of learning how to be more encouraging, forgiving and compassionate with ourselves. A means of self discovery.

Compassionate Accountability can be explored through meditation and journaling as well as coaching and mentoring. If you are working on goals or a vision, you could try writing down these prompts and see what comes as a reply, or reading them through slowly before a meditation practice and seeing what comes up:

• What went well here / didn’t go so well?

• Did any thoughts or behaviours support or hinder me?

• Is there a way of acknowledging all that I did, regardless?

• Do these goals still work for me? If they don’t, then what goals might?

• Would I like support to reach these goals?

Holistic Goals are heart-centred goals. They mean EVERYTHING to us. They get us out of bed each morning with a motivation that is rooted in our core, and drive us to be of service in the world.