Who decided your teaching schedule? Who set your personal goals? Who influenced your professional goals?

If the answer to those questions isn’t You, You and You then we need to talk my Pilates pal! Here’s the deal, and I am going to get pretty honest with you if you do not set your own goals someone will be making sure you’re working towards their goals.

I just returned from teaching a weekend of Pilates business workshops at Vitality Method Pilates in Atlanta, GA. I was brought in to teach my Converting First Time Clients and my Teaching your Schedule workshop.

I spent my mornings teaching some amazing clients and then my afternoons diving deep into why we are the ones in charge of our business and our schedule which means we are in charge of our lives! Isn’t that so great?

As a Pilates instructor, it is so easy to teach whenever a client needs a session. We don’t want to say no to money. It’s easy to let a client tell us they will be out of town for a couple of weeks and to just say “ok, See you when you get back.”  It’s easy to allow our clients and the studio’s needs to take place of our own. Especially when our goals are not part of our schedule. When our goals are not a priority.

I love, and I mean LOVE, looking at goals! I enjoy looking at past goals, current goals and even keeping a list of goals to percolate on for the future. I remember one of the first times I did a legit goal-setting situation I had all these goals on my list. I wanted to teach at the PMA, publish my book, become a teacher trainer, do a handstand, do a yoga teacher training, meditate, travel to teach, run a marathon, open a studio.  That first goal setting was so exhilarating and so interesting. I hit some of my 5 and 10-year goals in less than a year. I didn’t even know that was possible. And some of my one-year goals nagged at me. I would make excuses for them. Set a new date for them. Blame my longer-term goals coming to fruition for getting in the way.

That last one was the one that made me listen to my own self a bit more.

Was I really blaming achievements as the culprit for pushing off a goal? Yep, Yes, I was. And, honestly, it was probably a little true. But, the real truth was I didn’t really want to do them. If I did I would have made them happen, adjust the date and do what I did with goals that should have lasted me five years. Instead, I realized I was human and I had set goals that sounded good, sounded like a goal that I would want to do but the reality was I didn’t.

So, I mourned their loss for a moment. Took a sharpie and patted myself on the back. I freaking completed it. Sure, maybe I didn’t do a second marathon or get my yoga teacher training. But, that doesn’t mean I have to. And it doesn’t mean I can’t do it later. But, today, right now, it’s not a priority and that is a-ok!

With about 2.5 months left in 2017, I am taking the time to look at what I set out to do this year, what got done, what didn’t and what new goals made their way onto my list? For example, I set out this year to only do a few webinars and to date, we have done 11 with four more to go. They have been such a success that we had to let refine deadlines of other dream projects. I didn’t set out this year to update my book and now we are just a few weeks away from my book being available in Spanish! We have allowed the whole site to be available in Spanish and we are adding goals for courses and webinars to be available in Spanish!

What goals did you set out to rock this year? What have you decided to leave behind or push ahead? And how do you plan to make the future goal happen so you don’t keep pushing it off until another time? What do you want for 2018? Let’s plan it out together! Goal setting is always better when done with a friend.

Register here to join me for a free hour-long webinar (replay for one week) on October 12th 12 pm pst.

xx~LL