As we enter 2015, many of us will set personal goals that we want to achieve for the new year. Some of these goals may be losing weight, increasing corporate sales, finding a new job, visiting a new country, finding the love of our life, or simply getting ourselves out of a rut.
I used to be the type to set goals and specific objectives for my new year. I had goals for reading a specific number of books, participating in a number of volunteer activities, going to a particular country, trying to cook more, or picking up a musical instrument.
Just one problem: I couldn’t meet all of my goals. Funny thing was that I would even write down specific goals only to forget about them later or not even bother following up. I actually think I had way too many goals so I couldn’t even manage and track how well I was working toward achieving one goal when another goal was consuming my time.
Now, what happens if we fail and don’t meet our goals? Is it really the end of the world if you don’t lose the weight you set to lose, or didn’t get that dream job, or just couldn’t sustain a relationship to lead to marriage?
Are we too much of a goal-oriented society? Are we focused too much on achieving results?
I actually think we are becoming so deeply entrenched about getting personal results that we are forgetting the most important element of achievement: just taking action to get us nearer to what we think is our end goal.
Whatever the goal that is to be achieved, there is only one thing preventing you from achieving it: the right mindset combined with the ability to act.
The quest for personal achievement and even inner peace is not a long and circuitous route as many believe. The reality of the world we live in is that the only thing that holds us back from achieving greater things in life is just ourselves.
I actually think we set our own “bar of achievement” too high. We make it competition, not about others, but our own selves. We beat ourselves up if we don’t achieve what we set out to do. We get frustrated. We get stressed. We box ourselves into a world that looks down upon us. The reality is that this world is our own world within.
I don’t know how many people out there have set the goal to hit the gym in January only to fall out of their interest by February. I think we talk too much and write extensive plans that really don’t guide but take up time to put together rather than just acting.
Now, it’s impossible to create a future without taking steps in the present. All that you need to really do is just take action by taking your first step toward what you have your prize on– nothing more.
As we start 2015, keep the following things in mind about goals:
- Goals may change based on circumstance. A crisis in the family or loss of interest will drive you to change your goals. Don’t worry if things change, and stop beating yourself up if you don’t get something that you set your eyes on. Some of the greatest athletes in the world have never won a championship or gold medal, despite participating in games for a long time. You have to eventually come to terms with what is achievable considering your circumstance.
- Don’t bother telling others about your goals. They will just question you about how things are going and how close you are to achieving your goals. If you don’t take any action toward your goal and they keep questioning, things will irritating for you. Just make goal setting your own secret and keep it that way.
- Don’t focus on necessarily delivering the end result of the goal within the year you set the goal. There is no real time-frame by which a goal is to be achieved. Goal setting is something you are trying to do differently or creating a shift in habit. If you set a goal to read 20 books in 2015 and only read 10 is that a bad thing? Not at all. You are reading after all, so just enjoy this very fact, be satisfied, and pick up a book whenever you have time. Quality over quantity is more important in the long run.
- Don’t try to achieve all of your goals in one swooping action. Goals are not like a grocery list where you walk into a grocery store pick up all the things you need and walk over to a cashier to make your purchase. Take baby steps to create a shift in your mindset and let your action guide the way. For example, if you are trying to make cooking more food at home a goal, create shifts by implementing processes to make this happen faster such as creating a menu of items you will prepare in advance, getting all the ingredients with one visit to the grocery store, or setting a few minutes whenever you have time to watch cooking demonstrations on YouTube.
- Goals may never really be achieved since results drive newer goals. As humans, we are ever hungry for dynamic change. Once we achieve something, we want to achieve something immediately after. Goals are short-lived. Once you climb up a mountain, you can enjoy the top for a bit but you do need to get down. You can either climb the same mountain again or try a new one, but the result will be same: the goal will be short-lived, temporary, and will drive you take action to work toward something else very soon.