Feb 3, 20213 min read

Your Best Year Yet #Perspectives with Sharon Pearson and Matt Lavars

Updated: Apr 13, 2022

Having your dreams come true isn't the stuff of making wishes and keeping your fingers crossed. Goal setting is what will see magic results.

Pulling a well-thumbed diary from her bag, Sharon Pearson’s dream book is her to go for planning out her goals for 2021. And not just in business. Sharon, who founded The Coaching Institute in 2004 and has seen used this strategy grow into a multi-million dollar global brand, also sets personal goals every year, 90 days, week, and day. She has a dream and an innovations book that details the steps to achieve every goal. Sharon swears by this strategy as she shares with Matt Lavars in the #Perspectives room her theme, purpose, and goals for 2021 and her strategy to achieve them.

SET A THEME When champagne corks are popping on New Year’s Eve, Sharon is never just congratulating herself on having a great year or looking for someone to dance with. She’s analysing mentally what she achieved, if it meant real progress and how it sets her up for the new year.

Then she sets a theme for the coming 365 days. Just don’t ask her what it is: she doesn’t tell “because I don’t want anyone coming and saying, ‘You’re not living it.’

Choosing the theme means looking back on the past year, asking, “How did I grow, I let myself down here, where do I need to build?” Sharon said.

“It takes hours of conversation with my husband JP, figuring out what that year needs to be. It’s about momentum and progress and purpose.

“The theme comes out of necessity, not possibility, and that trickles through hopefully into many things.” COMMIT TO A PURPOSE

“I do a slow waltz with my values, then my theme, then I do a purpose statement that informs what my goals are going to be ,” said Sharon, flipping through the diary for exact wording of this year’s version (which was changed in 2021 after being the same for 16 years.)

Vitality love wisdom and playfulness, but then now I've added emotional truth and uniqueness and growth, bravery, belonging, and variety. So they're Sharon's values for 2021 at this stage.

The purpose takes Sharon about two weeks to write, as she drills down into what's important, and crafts her words to best suit.

The 2020 purpose uses her legal name: “I Remi, see, hear, feel and know the purpose of my life is to awaken and live my true self."

GOAL SETTING: Sharon sets up to 15 personal and business goals (including a WIG, or Wildly Important Goal) every year, from those that are “close and inclusive and emotionally intimate with my friends” to sprawling professional ones." Her first goal is about her total self then it chunks down to the others “I know the least” such as contributing to charities. “My number one this year would be to emotionally express myself fully and truthfully.” The bestselling Ultimate You author tries not to set goals that rely on others, and aims to make them about progress and growth, like her theme. The yearly goals are broken down into the 90 day, weekly and daily time frames, all of which are written and finished before the time period kicks off. Planning for long term growth means you can’t keep acting in a short term way with short term fixes that will fail because they raise anxiety, then a goal becomes just to get out of anxiety rather than move forward. “I’ve been playing a long game for a long time,” said Sharon. “It’s what you do every day consistently that will get you to January in phenomenal shape.” Want to set up for a successful 2021?