How To Use Social Media To Help Achieve Your Goals

As successful women we have a whole lot of goals listed out before us. Whether you’re an amazing stay at home mum or a powerhouse of business, you have goals you want to achieve – even if you haven’t clearly identified them as goals (which you should…).

Your goals could include eating at least one healthy meal a day, making sure you go to the gym 3 times this week, setting up a beautiful workspace at home, learning 5 new networking techniques… whatever they are you can use social media to help achieve your goals.

Now I know this may sound counterproductive given the amount of time social media sucks from our days (seriously it feels like a time travelling vortex – before you know it an hour has passed and you’ve achieved absolutely nothing) but I assure you there is merit to this theory.

When we have clear goals in mind, in order for us to keep on tack to achieving them we need to surround ourselves with information and motivation that drive us to obtaining our desired outcomes.

And here’s where social media comes in.

Say your goal is make sure you eat one healthy meal a day – a perfectly reasonable goal for someone wanting to make the switch to healthy eating.

According to research by Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange the average American under 35 years of age clocks up a whopping 4.2 hours per day on social networking sites. That’s massive.

And if that number shocks you, just take a few minutes to think of how often you reach for your phone and just quickly open that Facebook app or Instagram feed.

Now, imagine if when you opened that app or scrolled through that feed, you were bombarded with images that supported your goal.

You saw articles on Facebook about healthy eating and recipes for healthy meals, your Instagram feed was filled with images of healthy meals and #inspo, the Pinterest smart feed starts showing you more and more healthy meal ideas and blog posts to help keep you on track….

You see, dopamine, our ‘feel good’ neurotransmitter is triggered when we have an unexpected reward. Seeing images of healthy eating, which is in line with your goal is seen as a reward by the brain – your brain tells you that you are doing the right thing because it is being confirmed by what you see around you.

Much like when you decide to buy a new car you start to see that car model everywhere… it’s your brains way of reassuring you that you’ve made the right decision.

But what is important is that dopamine is heavily related to motivation. It creates guided actions based around the rewarding mechanism. Not only does this mean that you get that ‘feel good’ hit when you see something health related, but your brain encourages you to seek out more to continue getting it’s ‘feel good’ hit.

Therefore, the more you flood your social media pages with images and articles that support your goal, the more your brain will motivate you to achieve it. Incredible hey?

So take a few minutes to work out what your goals are… what is it that you want to achieve? At the moment I personally want to grow my business and therefore surround myself with content that motivates me to do this.

My Instagram is filled with other women in business who are rocking it, my Facebook is full of amazing businesses that keep me on track and my Pinterest is just amazing – I love Pinterest.

What are your goals and what do you have flooding your feeds? I’d love to hear from you – leave your goals and your social media handles below so I can come and check you out!