Hope you had a productive and fun weekend.  I hosted a virtual cocktail party for a lot of my past clients again and it was super fun!  What a great way to connect with people and keep your past clients in your sphere.

For a long time, I have been talking to the Collective about something that could be, maybe, more important than achieving your goals.

Actually, when it comes to achieving goals, there are two trains of thought:

Setting a high goal that is almost out of reach. The thought process here is that having a lofty goal will motivate you to work as hard as you can to achieve it.

Setting a minimum standard that is doable, but you absolutely must reach. The thought process here is that if you make your minimum standard easily attainable, you’ll likely surpass it and feel great about your progress.

For a while now, I have been talking about minimum standards as the answer.

When you set a minimum standard, you’re simply telling yourself that you will not, under any circumstances, go below that number (or metric, or whatever it is). It makes things very simple and clear-cut—if you don’t do X, you’ve failed.

For instance, if you tell yourself you ABSOLUTELY have to call ONE past client a day Monday through Friday, that is doable, no?

And if you keep doing that, chances are it will become a habit, you will get more confident and comfortable doing it and you will do more.

It’s a different mentality… But if you can set a minimum standard and stick to it every week, you’ll be setting yourself up for the best year yet.

Key here is having accountability to meet those standards.  If you get to the end of the week and you have two more calls you need to make to meet your minimum standard, you might just think of blowing it off.

Having an accountability partner or a coach is key here.

If you want to stick to your minimum standard, if you want to achieve your goals, you have to be disciplined. There’s simply no way around it.

Tell me what minimum standard you set right here!