A new year is peeking around the corner, and for all I know you could be very well excited to leave 2018 behind. With its good and bad, it’s been one hell of a year and a clean slate has never looked more tempting. I, for one, am already planning what I want to do in 2019 and how I am going to achieve the outcomes I desire – and since I know this is a rather delicate and scary topic for a lot of people, I want to talk to you a bit about goal setting.
What are goals to begin with? When you set a goal for yourself, you admit to wanting to achieve something that will usually improve your life or help you make progress in a particular area of your existence. Goals are fairly diverse, and we usually want more than one thing at a time: we’re complex beings and we could plan on moving house, losing weight and picking up a new hobby all at the same time.
The often terrifying thing about goals is that they can go one of two ways: we can either achieve our goals, make them a reality or we can fail and they remain a thing we aspire to, but we don’t yet have. I think this particular part about setting goals is what stirs people away from wanting to set goals to begin with: we decide we are bound to fail before we even start.
So with this post, I want to change your perspective, show you the benefits of setting goals and finally, how to successfully set goals for 2019 so it is almost guaranteed that you will achieve them all.
First of all, why setting goals?
Goals give us purpose. We don’t just aimlessly wander around this big, scary world we were thrown in seemingly by happenstance, but we take control, we point at the things that we desire in our lives and say, I want this. I want this more than anything. I want this so badly I am willing to get up obscenely early in the morning, put the hard work in everyday, walk the line to get to the place where I can have it. Think of a child around the age of five, and how easy it would be for them to choose a toy in the store and throw a tantrum in the middle of the aisle because they want that specific toy and no other.
When we grow up, we suddenly lose that drive and passion that toddlers seem to have whenever they want a particular something. You might say, well, this comparison is void because children can’t consider situations critically like adults do. But at no point does setting goals not involve critical thinking. In fact, setting goals is the best starting point for putting together a plan of action. By knowing what you want to achieve, you have even the slightest idea where you’re supposed to start. Let’s say, you want to improve your physical fitness and be more confident in your body? Just by considering this goal, you already know you should be exercising more, perhaps even take dance classes. Quite self-explanatory, isn’t it?
Throughout the journey of achieving our goals, we might run out of motivation to go any further – and remembering what we were heading for when we started is often a good way of building that drive back up. Setting goals will make you excited to get up in the morning and take an extra step towards something that you truly want, otherwise you would not waste your emotional energy on something that would never be of use and value to you. Same as with purpose, admitting to what you want and committing to working for it is a truly empowering gesture.
2019 is a brand new year, a clean slate for you to start over, but same is every new day, new hour, new minute. Regardless of when you decide to chase a fresh start, setting goals is your best friend moving forward, of course, if done right. So we should now move on to looking at the most efficient and fruitful ways of setting new goals.
Setting S.M.A.R.T. goals
In my experience with therapy, I was introduced to the S.M.A.R.T. concept for setting goals. Although tailored to the purpose and meaning of therapy, this framework can be applied to any other intervention, could it be about physical health, professional work or any form of personal development. Firstly introduced in a 1981 academic paper by George T. Doran, the name is an acronym for:
S – Specific – targeting a particular area for improvement.
M – Measurable – can be quantified.
A – Assignable – resources and those responsible can be specified.
R – Realistic – what can be realistically achieved with the available resources.
T – Time-related – can place the process of achieving the goals on a timeline.
For it to make a bit more sense, I will adjust this framework to the previous example I’ve given about improving physical fitness. For this goal to be achievable and ‘smart’, I should be making sure that it is:
Specific – what do I mean by ‘physical fitness’? Example: increasing flexibility and strength, being able to carry heavy weights, easing any pain that I might have.
Measurable – how can I measure my progress? Example: increasing the weight I am working with, stretching every day to check my flexibility, checking in with my doctor.
Assignable – what can I use to achieve this goal? Who will help me achieve this goal? Example: attending the local gym, using online resources to learn new exercises, hiring a personal trainer.
Realistic – what kind of results should I expect to achieve in three months’ time? Example: reading up on how results show after weekly, consistent exercise in order to build realistic expectations.
Time-related – how much time should I give myself to achieve my goal? Example: three months.
Using the S.M.A.R.T. framework is a brilliant place to start when you’re not sure how to exactly set your goals. Not only is it easy to use and adapt to any goals you might have, but it also equips you with the tools that you need to achieve your goals once you set them. By breaking up your goals in this manner, they will look less big and scary than they do when you first set your mind to them, and it’ll be easier for you to get on with the actual work.
Don’t be afraid to prioritise!
Probably the biggest issue I’ve ever had with setting goals and following them was how overzealous I would always get every time I would decide I want to do something. I could be planning to put more work at school or apply for more work opportunities and next thing I knew, I was planning a complete redecoration of my room and setting up my workout routines for the next week and trying out dozens of different recipes in order to completely change my diet. Don’t get me wrong, none of this is bad in itself, but I would often struggle to balance everything that I wanted to achieve in a small window of time, and I was, therefore, more likely to fail in the process.
In order to be successful in achieving the goals that you set for yourself, you should prioritise what is more important for you in this particular moment. No matter what it is – getting a good grade in a certain subject, exercising more or developing a new skill – it is important to you for a reason, and just because it might not be important for somebody else, that does not mean that you are doing it wrong. Different people have different lives, and you know better than anyone what is good for yours, so prioritise what will do you good first.
Although it is very tempting to overhaul your entire life all at once, the process can easily become tedious and you will feel overwhelmed with all these commitments you’ve made. Take it one step at a time: plan, make progress, move on to the next thing you have to do. Once again, it is best that you start with the one thing you think you need the most – I’ve got to reiterate, you need it for a reason.
What’s the deal with New Year’s Resolutions?
Since I started this post by talking about 2019, I’ve kind of thrown myself in the mouth of the lion: what about New Year’s Resolutions? The one thing everybody seems to dread and nobody ever completes? I could write an entire post all in itself about how resolutions work – and how they don’t work for some people but for the sake of this post, I will keep it short and sweet: you’ve got to set goals, not resolutions.
The reason for that is because resolutions have lost their meaning long ago due to people’s tendency of demonizing the term and turning and twisting it into something that was never meant to be the way it is now. Resolutions are NOT set in stone: you can change and adapt them as the year goes by. Resolutions are NOT dreadfully long and too muddy for you to navigate through: they are meant to be broken down in smaller goals scattered across the year because they are nothing more than goals themselves.
I am aware I can’t go out there to tell people how to do resolutions right; it does seem like quite a counterproductive goal in itself. The one thing I will do, though, is ask you to set goals instead of resolutions. And then to watch your lives change as you commit to that in the new year.
My advice for goal setting
I think I can say that I’ve become quite skilled in setting goals for myself, after a long history of doing it wrong, indeed. Do I have the secret to setting the perfect goals and achieving them flawlessly? Absolutely not, but that would make the entire process lose its magic. One last thing I can offer you, though, is a bit of advice on how to trick yourself into setting goals that will help you achieve more in the same amount of time you give yourself.
Naturally, you should look out to stick to a small number of goals. No more than five, less if this number stresses you out. If you choose a smaller number of goals to focus on, you will achieve them quicker because you will channel all your time, energy and resources on them, you will get that feeling of gratification more swiftly and you can move on to other goals just as fast.
Although this takes you back to the S.M.A.R.T. goal a little bit, focus on making your goals small and attainable. It is better to tell yourself, I will work out three times this week, than to say, I will get physically fitter in time for summer, because you can work out three times in one week, but working out thirty times until the summer starts is more overwhelming and you are more likely to give up midway. Taking it one step at a time is key.
Finally, try your best to make it fun. Think of it as more of a levelling up system: at no point are you the same level as you were before you did work towards achieving your goal. No matter how little work you might feel like you are doing, it is experience that you achieve towards the next level. Hell, even set up a reward system I that’s what works for you. I know for a fact I buy myself a nice notebook every time I kill one of my goals off.
And there you have it, my complete guide to achieving your goals in 2019! I do hope that you will find this helpful and if you do, please don’t hesitate to let me know by leaving a comment down below! The comments section is also where you should be headed at if you want to leave your own suggestions and advice on achieving goals: let’s make it a full-on discussion!
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