What will help you achieve your goals?

Getting clear on what will help you make your goals happen, as well as what barriers there are, makes achieving your goals more likely.

We’ll start by taking a look at the kinds of things that may help you achieve your goals for maternity care reform – whatever those goals involve.

The importance of clarity

The key is the importance of clarity in creating your goals: unless you know where you’re going, it’s hard to get there. Along with setting achievable goals with clearly laid out steps, clarity is a basic requirement. Having lofty goals can be inspiring, but biting off more than you can chew can also be demoralising as the goal can then seem unattainable.

Being with like-minded others

One of your strongest allies in facilitating change is being with like-minded others, especially in forming a group with the same goals and beliefs. Creating a social change group means that you’re not on your own – you can use the expertise, drive and energy of a group in order to keep moving toward your goal.

This gives you a network of support to draw on and helps you to be resilient and keep going even when things are challenging. As we saw in the real-life stories earlier this week, groups can be formalised (like Logan Together) or informal (like Nicole Chegwyn and her fellow mums who stood as political candidates).

Celebrating success

On your own or within a group, celebrating success can help you continue to move forward toward your goals. The simple act of continued action (keeping ongoing – not letting things slide) takes you a long way toward achievement. Staying focused on the solutions, rather than on everything that’s wrong, helps those solutions become reality.

Being well-informed

Being well informed is also a powerful facilitator for change. Doing this course is a great step. Then keep going in your quest for information and education, and remember: the evidence is on your side.

There’s a great deal of research supporting midwifery continuity of care as the optimal maternity care model for pregnant women globally – and more research is emerging daily. For example, this study found that:

“the benefits of midwifery continuity of carer in pregnancy extend beyond a more positive birth experience and better birthing and infant outcomes, to mitigating the effects of high levels of stress experienced by women in the context of a natural disaster on postnatal mental health.”

(Kildea, Simcock, et al, 2017)

New studies are emerging daily: stay informed to stay motivated and enable change in yourself and those around you.

In order for you to achieve your goals and facilitate change, action is required. Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of taking the leap and trusting that the net will appear.