New Year New Goal?

It’s that time a year to try again! (What else do I have to try to start doing this year and fail within a few weeks?) It’s almost annoyingly cliche.  But whether life is enjoyable or not, aren't we somewhat wandering aimlessly without goals?  Time keeps moving.  It’s easy to wake up further and further down your life and wonder where the time went. 

When we start asking the bigger questions like:

What do I want in life? What drives me? What do I feel like I need to do with my life? If I could do one thing and not fail, what would I do?  (If the start to my NFL career at age 40 might have passed me by, is there anything else I want to do?) What do I want to do in 5 years? 10 years? 15? 

While I struggle to meet goals like anyone else these are 3 things I’ve picked up over the years about goal-making. 

Measure them:

Make them measurable in some way. “Be a good person,” is pretty tough to measure. “ While it’s an excellent goal, that should be a daily life thing we’re always working towards. “Make more money,” is very measurable but like most things it will require a time component. Which leads to the next part of goal setting: Time.

Check them:

Put time check-in’s on your goals? I think the best way to check-in is monthly. Simply asking what did I do to work towards this goal in the last 30 days is a necessary question to ask.  I think weekly is definitely too short. There may be a few weeks and even a whole month that go by with very little if any progress. Life is crazy sometimes with family, work, friends, activities, church etc. I’ve been there. So 30 days, re-evaluate. Wait any longer and you’re wasting time. Asking; “How can I realistically adjust my time to work towards my goals?”, can go a long way.

Celebrate them:

At the end of crazy busy months it’s easy to say there is nothing that could be done. The key is small steps. Small steps are still steps. If your goal is weight loss, even 2 pounds for the whole month are steps. If your goal is song writing how about a few lines to a chorus that is not even a tune yet. Steps are steps. 

The biggest problem with small steps is that they are easy to get frustrated with and quit.”I haven’t done anything! Why try?!”  Don’t stop. The key is to stack the small wins upon small wins. A couple paragraphs of writing isn’t anything but if do that for multiple months all of a sudden you have a chapter. A $175 addition to your savings isn’t anything but in 6 months you have $1k.  Celebrate those small wins with people that will cheer you on until you gain momentum. 

Cheers to a New Year and some new soul-searching goal-setting time.

Measure them, check them, and celebrate them and you may be surprised what you can achieve.

Part 2 Finding Time: coming soon.