Goal Setting That Works

This article was first published in Stepparentmagazine.com

How many times have you set New Year’s Resolutions? How many have lasted beyond the first week in January? How many of them were building on celebrating your wins? How many were based around correcting your perceived faults?

If you’re like most of us – the majority of your New Year resolutions did not last till the end of the year, and the bulk of them would have been to fix your ‘bad’ habits.

What if we switched that up?

What if we decided this year, this decade, we are going to base our goals on building on our strengths, on celebrating our skills and talents; on stepping into our most powerful selves…?

So often our goals are based on comparison with others. They have more money, better stuff, nicer kids, happier families, better bodies…the list goes on and on. We see ourselves from a place of lack, of ‘could do better’, from a list of never-ending shoulds that we use to find ourselves wanting. Let’s make 2020 the year we kick that nonsense to the kerb. Let’s make 2020 the year we set ourselves up for feeling good about who we are and the journey we are on.

Life is not a destination. We don’t have a perfect life once we achieve x, or buy y, or have z relationship. The only constant in life is change. Life is in a constant state of flux, unless we accept that the messy, imperfect state we are in right at this moment is actually ‘life’, we can miss it. We can get so caught up in trying to become something or someone, we forget to be.

Being is all we have.

We can aspire to make our ‘being’ more in alignment with our values. We can aspire to make our ‘being’ more joyful, productive, prosperous, healthy etc. What we need to remember is that that ‘more’ comes in increments, it sneaks up on us as we go about our lives. If we are active in pursuing our goals, the changes are small, gradual, sometimes almost imperceptible. Then BOOM – wow! We realise we are now going to the gym and enjoying it, or we have changed our eating habits and no longer think about how hard it is to give up the soda.

It’s about being in the now, the small choices, the moments.

So this year, choose to be you. Step into you. Embrace the being and be more of who and how you want to be in the world.

I originally wrote this at the beginning of 2020, well before any of us realised what a shit show this year would turn out to be. The best laid plans were left as ashes as the global pandemic took hold. I’m publishing this towards the end of 2020 on my own blog. Everything I said back at the beginning of the year holds true now. We can start wherever and whenever we are. Deciding to step into ourselves without judgement may be the best gift we give ourselves in 2020. Or you might want to take this approach as you plan for 2021.