Staying True To your Goals

Staying True to Your Goals

Goals are critical to self-esteem, confidence, and satisfaction with life. When you are setting and keeping goals you become a dependable trustworthy person that does what they say they will do. You feel accomplished because you know you have made progress as a person. Setting goals to change your life gives you a real sense of control over your life.

I’ve been disappointed this year at how many people don’t set resolutions because, “no one keeps their goals.” I have my share of resolutions that I haven’t kept, but goals are the best way I’m aware of to ensure growth from year to year. The difference you’ll notice is a feeling of grateful satisfaction at the goals you achieved and the progress you made, as opposed to wondering where the year went and a feeling you wasted your time.

Goals should help you develop in ways that are important to you. Sit and examine your life and pick something you want to change in life like, “I want to enjoy work more. I want to compliment my family members more. I want to be happier.”
Pick specific behaviors to change that you think will help you reach those goals
Make a plan on how you will remember to do those behaviors daily
Start acting, reviewing the goal daily, weekly look at what made you succeed and what made you fail in reaching the goal, and if you were good at keeping it look at what results the goal is getting you (generally it takes two weeks to start seeing change).
Modify goals as necessary

Notes:

Simplify–It is helpful to start with simple fitness or diet goals like, “do as many push ups as I can every morning after breakfast except on sundays.” “Replace soda with water when I eat out.” Set a date to evaluate the goal and decide if you want to continue it or not.
Start–Do your research, but it’s more important that you start setting goals and reviewing what’s working for you and what doesn’t work than to have the perfect goal to solve your problem. Analyze what you want to change in your life asking yourself, “Why do I feel that way? Why does that keep happening? What am I doing that elicits that response from others?” and dig as close as you can to the root cause of what you want changed. You’ll get better at this with practice, hence why it’s so important to just start.
Only set 1-3 goals at a time, the more you set the more stressed you’ll be and the less likely you will be to reach your goal.
Use paper to help you think and troubleshoot your goals. Writing things on paper, or in a definite place on your phone, helps you focus and makes the goal stick in your mind more.
Community–Talk about your goals with people. They can give you ideas, encouragement, and them knowing makes you more motivated to reach the goal. They may even be inspired to set goals themselves.
Celebrate–especially small wins. Keeping yourself in a positive mindset is super important when working to achieve your goals. It is hard to see progress right away so celebrating that you were able to walk or run further even if it was a small amount, if you could stand up longer, you added an extra weight to the set, anything and everything should be celebrated when it comes to taking a step towards your goal.
Relationship goals may take longer to see results from because unless you have a reputation of improving yourself people may be suspicious of change and you’ll have to change their expectations

Photo by Tran Le Twan