When January rolls around, many people declare resolutions or list goals, hopeful the next year will be different from the last. Yet, often, people fail after only a few weeks. That’s because changing yourself is hard when you can’t change your habits, and you can’t change your habits if you don’t understand the reasons they exist.
Some modern philosophers believe setting goals is a waste of time. Goals are just arbitrary ways to measure someone else’s idea of success, right? And what happens, anyway, once you achieve your goal? Lounge on the couch for the rest of your life, or mindlessly jot down a never-ending list of goals?
Tim Ferris suggests rather than listing goals, list your fears. Listing the fears that stop him from even chasing after goals, and “the worst that could happen,” helps him move past his fears and toward the path he wants to take in life.
Personally, I think there’s nothing more important to getting what you want out of life than developing healthy, proactive habits and remaining disciplined and committed to your goal. Being able to define both your goals and fears are important steps to your idea of success, but lists mean nothing when we don’t practice good habits.
The first steps to accomplishing goals
Before I begin thinking about what I want to accomplish or succeed at in a given year, I think about:
- Who do I want to be known as?
- What do I want to be known for?
- What brings me most joy and meaning?
If I know who I want to be, what I want to do, and what makes me happiest, it’s easy to separate arbitrary “keeping up with the Joneses” phony goals from real, meaningful, purposeful goals.
Having S.M.A.R.T. goals also increases your chances of success. (SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE, ATTAINABLE, RELEVANT, TIMELY.)
Once you know who you want to be, what you want to be known for and what gives you most joy and meaning in life, figure out specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely goals.
Wanting to be rich is not a SMART goal. It’s vague, measured differently in different cultures, not necessarily easily attainable, and might not even be relevant to what brings you joy and meaning in your life.
However, wanting to make $X amount of money yearly so that you can live a certain lifestyle is closer to a SMART goal.
Fears
Now that you know your goals, take a look at your fears.
Are these your true goals? Or did you leave out a lifelong dream you’re too scared to pursue?
List your FEARS that stand in the way of you achieving your goals, as big or small as your goals and as big or small as your fears might be.
For instance, perhaps you have a goal to lose 20 pounds, but your fear is that you’re not disciplined enough, or you’ll fail anyway, so what’s the point?
Once you’ve defined your fears, decide how real they are. Will that really happen? Is there a way to stop it? Even if that does happen, what’s the worst that will come from it?
Sometimes our fears aren’t as big as we imagine them to be. Sometimes they’re not real at all.
Looking backward to move forward
Now that you know your true goals, and have faced your fears, take a look back on your goals from last year. Even if you never wrote them down, you probably had an understanding of what you wanted to achieve or become last year.
Did you follow through?
If you didn’t accomplish them, what was it that stood in your way? How can you tackle that obstacle this year?
Forming Habits
The only way to become good at something is through consistent practice. You must commit. Remain disciplined. And enjoy routine, to some extent.
Developing helpful habits is the only way you can achieve your goals. But it’s okay to ask for help or take a few shortcuts.
- 1) For instance, use your calendar or reminder on your phone or computer. Find a time in your daily, weekly, and monthly schedules and write down the habit you want to develop into that calendar. Set a reminder, an alarm, or a notification to do it.
- 2) Seek an accountability coach, professional or amateur. Sometimes I ask my husband to hold me accountable for certain behaviors I’d like to quit, and he asks the same of me.
- 3) Keep a journal or a log documenting your progress.
- 4) Write your daily habits on sticky notes, hang them on your mirrors, your desk, your bedframe.
- 5) Keep your habits visible. If your goal is to read every night before bed, keep a book by your bed, and make sure you schedule it into your nightly routine.
- 6) Don’t quit all together just because you skipped a day, a week, or a month. Pick up where you left off and carry on!
- 7) Develop good habits by eliminating bad habits. Out of sight, out of mind. If you want to lose weight, don’t buy bad food. If you want to get more sleep, set an alarm to go to bed.
- 8) Write mantras and repeat them. If you want to develop the good habit of speaking kindly and kick out the bad habit of gossiping, tell yourself, “I am impeccable with my word.”
Writing a list of goals is only the first step of a multi-step process for becoming the person you want to be and living the life you want to live.
At the end of the day, goals are meaningless if they don’t bring you joy. Developing healthy habits that allow you to live each day with purpose is more important than sticking to some resolution.
Figure out who you want to be and how you want to live, and remain committed to practicing that lifestyle.
Brigit
