2020 has been a rollercoaster ride for us all. The pandemic had led to economic hardships, redundancies, furloughs, and forced many of us to put our dreams on hold. Lareal Lipkins felt hopeless at the best of times as our dreams feel further away than ever.
It’s easy to feel alone at this time, but sometimes all we need to hear is that we have permission to believe in our dreams and take the steps to achieve them, in spite of everything. Author and inspirational speaker Lareal Lipkins is helping women reignite that fire and remind them that their dreams are still attainable. And ironically, her first piece of advice? Setting goals isn’t enough.
“Setting goals is a good starting point,” she explains. “But think about how many times you’ve set goals at the beginning of the year and within a few weeks you find yourself distracted, discouraged, and doubting whether or not you can really do it.”
Most people fall victim to the same pitfalls: setting the same goal every year; setting goals that feel “too big” and overwhelming; knowing what you want, but not knowing how to get there; lacking motivation; hiding behind “planning” to avoid execution; talking yourself out of the things you don’t actually want to do.
Speaker L’areal Lipkins
L’areal believes traditional goal setting is doomed to fail, and instead established her own alternative method which brings more tangible results. Neatly summed up under the acronym of CLARITY, her own seven step program covers the following:
Clear goals
Linked to a bigger vision
Actionable
Realistic
Important
Time bound
Y (Why)
Lareal Lipkins is uniquely qualified to advise on this topic, after hitting a professional and personal wall herself. After getting tired of recycling the same goals every year, she set out to discover why 92% of people who set goals never achieve them. She’s even written down everything she’s learned in her book, A Woman With Vision, in which she gives a blueprint of how to make your dreams come true.
She emphasizes that being a “Woman With Vision” means having the confidence to go after you want, giving yourself permission to let go of your old ways, and taking action. Against all our instincts, the first step to achieving your goals, may just be by not officially “setting” them.
