Reviewing your goals at least once a month is a key to maintaining focus on your goals and actually making them a reality. The thing is, after setting a goal, reviewing and reflecting on it regularly is something many people forget to do.

The truth is, if you don’t think about your goals, you won’t make them happen.

Too often we write down our goals and then just cross our fingers and hope for the best that we’ll actually be able to achieve them. Not a great plan.

If you’ve set a goal and broken it down into bite sized pieces (check out: The 5 Secrets to Write Amazing Goals), one of the keys to making it a reality is to consistently review and reflect. Ideally, you’d go through this process weekly or even daily, but at the very least you need to do it monthly.

How do you review your goals exactly? Ask yourself the following questions:

What have I done this month?

What have I achieved?

What progress have I made against my goals?

What lessons have I learned?

What didn’t go so well and how can I stop it happening again?

What went really well that I need to make sure I replicate?

Or what didn’t go so well that I have to make sure that I don’t do again?

Ask yourself if you’re happy with the way you spent your time during the month? Did you spend it in a way that helped you progress towards your goals? If not, what changes can you make next month to change that?

A super important (and fun!) part of your review process is celebrating! Yay! You need to acknowledge and celebrate the wins you had during the month.

Celebration is critical to help us maintain momentum. (check out: The One Thing that Holds People Back from Achieving More) The act of celebrating actually wires our brain for achievement.

When we celebrate, our brain searches for more opportunities to attract to achieve something more because it wants the feeling of celebrating again. It wants more of the happy chemical – serotonin – that is released into our brain when we celebrate our success.

Set a regular day to review your goals, maybe it’s the 4th Saturday of every month, for example. Make a standing date with yourself and work a little celebration in there, like taking yourself out for coffee and cake. Or reviewing your goals and then treating yourself and a friend for lunch. Or it might be as simple as pouring a glass of wine and toasting yourself to all you’ve achieved in the past month.

The other thing is you don’t make any progress if you’re not constantly learning and adjusting and changing your strategy. These changes only come from reflecting and working out what went well and what didn’t so you can constantly be course correcting.

If you don’t ever stop and do that reflection, you’re never going to improve things for the future.

Goal reviewing is so important for both of those reasons. To really get excited about the great things you’ve done to keep the momentum going  and look at the lessons that you’ve learned from the things that didn’t go so well.

You need to do this each month. If you reflect each week, even better, but at a minimum, you need to get ‘goal review’ in your schedule every single month.

If you do, it will absolutely skyrocket your success. You’ll achieve goals so much faster because your reflection sessions will help you keep on track. Checking in and keeping focused will help you move forward past those obstacles and celebrate those successes that you’ve had along the way.

I’ve got a great download for you. It’s a monthly reflection form to guide you through the review process that I usually only share with my Success Squad. We’re a small group of inspirational people working together, supporting each other to skyrocket our successes. I LOVE this group. The opportunity to join us will be coming soon, so if you’re interested, check out jointhesuccesssquad.com and get yourself on the waitlist!

I’m kind of making a little exception here to share the form with you all because I really want to make sure that goal reviewing is something you integrate into your life.

I’m excited to hear about your successes once you start using the reflection form each month, send me an email or Facebook message to let me know how you’re doing. I’d love to hear from you.

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