Goal Buddy: Someone to kick your butt into gear

According to the Cambridge dictionary, an individual being held accountable is someone “completely responsible for what they do and must be able to give a satisfactory reason for it” (Cambridge, 2020). When we are focusing on our own goals, it’s sometimes hard to look at the reasons we are feeling unmotivated and decide whether we have a satisfactory reason for not following through with the things needed to be done to make our goals a reality.

This is why having a goal buddy is an amazing way to keep yourself on track. Your goal buddy doesn’t have to be trying to achieve the same goal as you. They just need to be someone you know won’t let you make unnecessary excuses and knows your goal and your system to get to that goal.

Having a goal buddy is like reporting to a friendly boss. They’ll make sure you are on task and help you decide whether your excuses for the day are out of laziness or if you’re overwhelmed. This will make self-sabotage that littlest bit more difficult.

A good routine to get into is to tell your goal buddy your micro goals at the beginning of your time together, your aim for that session that’ll help you towards your big goal. This will help them to cheer you on when you’re so close to the micro goal. They should also know about any deadlines you’ve set yourself, your progress and any thing they’ll need to help you avoid.

Your goal buddy should also know your motivation for wanting to reach whatever big goal you have planned. If they know your motivation, they’ll be able to encourage you and remind you of that when you forget it yourself. On that last set or when you’re on the brink of giving up, they’ll be able to give you some more motivation. Plus, everything is more fun when you have someone to share it with. Having a goal buddy is great for gossip sessions (while working on your goal of course), having someone celebrate your wins with you and helping you get back on track if need be.

Diamond Dance can also be your goal buddy. Signing up for your classes is a type of goal buddy. As you’ve scheduled a class, the instructors and your classmates will notice when you aren’t there. Then it becomes way easier to show up then to explain why you didn’t.

Accountability works because it is human nature to care about what people think of us, so we don’t want to upset our goal buddies by not committing to the goal. It also makes the goal exist to other people and therefore takes it off the list of ‘things I’ll do eventually’ and moves to ‘things I’ve got to work on now’.

We have a helpful goal setting package complete with a video and templates you can use to set up your goals; download it here! (It’s free!)

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