Goal Setting Tips for the New Decade
- Dream big, but start small
- Why you shouldn’t keep secrets about your New Year’s goals
- Ways to stay motivated and on-track
January always sets the stage for fresh starts and new goals. And we all feel inspired to improve our lives in meaningful ways. But this year is especially exciting, because we’re entering a brand new decade. Even if you’ve never made resolutions in the past, the 2010’s are worthy of some serious goal-setting. In the next 10 years, you could graduate from college, start a new career, or accomplish something equally impressive. Now is the time to optimize your goals and implement strategies that will bolster your success. Check out the following goal-setting tips:
Pursue the Ideal, But Keep Your Goals Realistic
Goals are all about dreaming, and there’s nothing wrong with dreaming big. If you want to become the next governor of California, you should absolutely shoot for that goal. At the same time, it’s important to set smaller, “building block” goals along the path towards a major goal. Maybe you could aim to complete a college course in political science. Next, you might aim to get elected to your local school board or town council. As you achieve these smaller goals, you’ll gain more self-confidence, and you’ll have a better sense of how you should tackle the larger goal.
Consider All Costs Associated With Your Goals
Remember that “costs” aren’t always financial. Whenever you start something new, you stop devoting time, money, or energy to something else. This is great news if you’re trading couch potato time for exercise time. But goal trade-off is usually more complicated – like, lost time with your family in exchange for more time devoted to schoolwork. Carefully consider how the process of reaching your goals will affect your health, your mindset, and your personal relationships.
Don’t Be Secretive about Your Goals
Some goal-setters are tempted to keep their plans a secret. They don’t want to fail in front of friends and loved ones. So they’d rather not reveal that they are trying. But secret goals are a form of self-sabotage. It’s like you’re already predicting that you won’t succeed. Instead, ask your family and friends to support your new endeavors. You might be surprised by how motivating the extra encouragement can be.
Choose a Role Model
When working towards a goal, it’s helpful to have a source of inspiration. Whether you want to earn your MBA or sculpt a set of six-pack abs, you should spend a few moments, every day, thinking of someone who accomplished something remarkable. If Sir Edmund Hillary could climb Mount Everest, then you can stop eating fast food. This little dose of perspective will help to remind you that change isn’t as difficult as it seems.
Don’t Spend More Time “Planning” than Actually “Doing”
Sometimes even the most organized people have a difficult time putting a plan into action. But you can’t be a perfectionist when it comes to new goals. There will never be an ideal day to start your diet or quit smoking. And over-planning is often just a mask for your excuses. If it’s raining on the day you hoped to start exercising, rent an exercise video. It’s important to learn how to troubleshoot for your goals as early as possible.
Put Your Goals in Writing
It’s hard to ignore the written word. Keep your goals front and center – on your refrigerator, your bathroom mirror, your office cubicle – and don’t worry about who might them. As the year rolls along, it’s easy to forget why you’re trying so hard at something that seems difficult. At those moments, it’s good to have a clearly written reminder.
Learn How to Rebound
It’s impossible to calculate how many people give up on a resolution after their first, tiny failure, but the number is probably very high. People seem to think that mistakes are irrevocable, and that anything less than a perfect record isn’t worth having. But you shouldn’t be so easily defeated. Accept the fact that you are going to fail occasionally. Use each failure as a lesson, and try to avoid the circumstances that contributed to your misstep. Small failures help us to appreciate our accomplishments. They also build our character, our stamina, and our problem solving skills.
Jennifer Applin is a freelance writer and will soon be the mother of six young children born within a 5-year span. Her writing focuses on strategies for busy parents to juggle it all.
Comments for Goal Setting Tips for the New Decade:
0 comment(s)