Dr. Natalie Bitature walks through how she sets and sustains goals: a year-in-review in December, defining who she wants to be, breaking big aims into weekly habits and quarterly milestones, then tracking with journals and habit apps. She learns from mentors' stories and celebrates small wins to stay on track.
Foreign. Hi, I'm Dr. Natalie. I thought I'll talk a bit about what motivates me, inspires me, and how I keep going with my new goals and ideas and attitude as the year progresses. So I think for me, the process is one reflecting on like the last year, what worked, what didn't work, what I liked, I didn't like, where I feel like I had shortcomings, what I need to work on, what, why I didn't achieve the things that I wanted to, and also what are the big wins and successes and the things that I'm grateful for. So then you start on like a better mindset, you're positive and ready to assess. Then I move to inspiration. What do I want to be this year? What do I want to achieve? What do I want my life to look like, my day to day to look like? So usually in December, in those quiet periods, like once everyone stops working, I like going through people's different reflection questions, like on Twitter or, or on Instagram, with different, like, ideas and different phrasing to see what kind of a person I want to be in the new year. And for me, what I've learned over the years. It's very easy to make a big, dramatic goal, but it's not very tangible. And I think the way to sustain these goals across the year is to now have like, milestones and specific points in the year where you're going to reflect and assess how am I doing on this goal? So the more specific, the more tangible, the more broken down it is, the better. So whenever I make new goals, I also break it down into tasks or like weekly habits and routines. So I know that to make my goal in 12 months, I need to be doing this many times per week. Whether it's physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, whatever it is, I have to break it down into how I'm going to track this along the year. So from an inspiration perspective, I like to see what are the, what are the traits that are going to help me sustain this goal? Or who are the people that already have achieved this goal? How did they achieve it? How are they maintaining it in their life? So for me, what inspires me is usually stories about people. People. So if I'm at work, it's about like, how a customer had a really great experience at a hotel and one of our staff helped them with something. Or if you're in the field, you hear about like a Save the Children program and the impact it's having on someone's life. Or if I'm at home, I'LL watch like, a documentary about, like, an athlete or a musician or someone who has had this great story where they overcame obstacles, they had resilience, they were so determined, they were so passionate. And I like stories like that. It reminds me about, like, the beauty in human beings and what's possible. It helps my mind to know that anything is possible if you have the right attitude and determination. You find the resources, you find the support, you find the way to keep going. And then I like to make it more specific. So for all the changes that are happening in my life this year, I now need to look for new mentors or new sources of information and resources that are going to teach me to become the person I need to be this year. My life tends to change year to year or every two years, depending on the sector I'm now working in or what's going on in my life. And so I have to constantly keep updating that I can't follow the same one person for five years or 10 years because my life keeps moving and evolving. And so that's something I've realized with time. So I look at the people who have what I am now trying to chase, and is it a trait? Is it a financial figure? Is it a skill that they have? What is it that they have that now I am trying to build this new habit or this new skill? How did they get there? What is their story? Let me try and understand them. So I try to do, like, immerse myself in that, and then I now make notes on it. How am I going to do this? So in their life, they did it this way. How do I translate that to my life? What's possible, what's feasible, what do I have here as resources? And then I can set my goals. And from there, now I track my goals every quarter. I think this is something I've talked about a lot. I think from learning about productivity and assessment and measurement, that's how you're going to improve performance. So even if it's something like my spiritual goals, I still have to track them in a way that I would track performance on something mental so that I make sure that I'm doing it every week to make sure that I'm hitting my target for the quarter so that I hit my target for the year. So I need to write about it to understand the inspiration, the why, what's driving me to do it, feel it like a visualization moment, what I will feel like when I've achieved this goal. Who will I be? The kind of person that I am trying to grow into and then break that down. So now that means every month I need to read this many pages, go to this many events, or meet this many people, or try this much or learn this course, and then break it down by week so that on Sundays, when I'm planning my week, I know that I have to try and fit this in three times this week, this one, once this week. Sometimes I use a habit tracker, like an app. I use my calendar a lot for that. I use my notes app for that. I use a journal to write how it's going, how I'm feeling about it. So every year I have the different things that I was trying to work on, and then that's how I make sure that I keep checking that am I doing it? Am I not doing it? If I'm not doing it, why, what's the reason? There must be some obstacle that I hadn't planned for. And if I'm doing it, I have to also enjoy that and be grateful and celebrate the wins and the success to encourage myself to continue doing it as the year goes.
