What's Your Reward

If you're a Goal Setter, do you do to reward yourself when you achieve your goal?

Big Goals are made a thousands of baby steps one must take to finally achieve that goal.

Every time you hit a checkpoint in your journey to the goal, you should reward yourself.

Reward System

If you have a set of Goals, then you should have a Reward System. Unfortunately, most people don't. To misquote Martha Stewart, "This is a bad thing."

If you don't reward yourself, you risk burnout. When you're always working hard to achieve something, and then you do, what happens? Do you celebrate the achievement in some appropriate way? Or do you just move on to the next goal and put the old nose to the grindstone and start working hard again?

That "work hard, accomplish the goal, start on the next goal," and repeat the process leads to burnout. You end up feeling overworked, exhausted, and even worse, you start wondering why you're working so hard.

Don't just shrug and think you'll do something special at some future date.

Don't think that just achieving the goal is reward in itself. It's not. You deserve a reward so design a Reward System for yourself.

If your garden needs weeding, and that's your goal and you do it, reward yourself. Maybe your reward would be a new plant for your garden or maybe an ice cream cone.

If your goal is to write a chapter, reward yourself with something appropriate--maybe meet a friend at Starbucks for a cappuccino.

If your goal is to write a book, then you have checkpoints and rewards with each chapter finished. At the end, when the book is ready to be published, reward yourself with something suitable.

I just finished a book. It's going through final edit now. Next week, I'll tell you how I rewarded myself.

Takeaway Truth

Remember that old cliche? All work and no play makes Joan a dull girl? Okay, okay, it was originally "Jack a dull boy."

It's true so avoid turning into a dull, pale version of yourself.