I've seen a lot of people making posts reflecting on what went on in their lives over the last year which is a pretty fool-proof way to feel bad about all the things I didn't do. This in turn can make you feel pressured to wow the world in the new year. While I have enough experience with negative self-talk to remember to compare myself against myself, rather than others, I do still feel that drive to make some resolutions.
Here's the problem: I suck at making and keeping goals. Unless they're regulated by someone else like grades in school, follow-through doesn't come naturally to me which is probably why I've never really made new years resolutions before. But there's a first time for everything and, as the proverb says: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
So, how to up my chances of following-through with these goals? One of the pluses of having a smart phone now is that I can write up my goals on my phone to have with me as a reminder wherever I go. I am 100% positive that I won't keep any of them perfectly but I'm hoping for consistency of effort rather than perfection. If your definition of success depends on never failing, you'll generally end up feeling more like a failure than you might otherwise. Failing is part of life, it's what we do when we're learning and growing but failing at something doesn't mean you'll never be good at it.
Another idea was to come up with tangible goals, specific things that I wanted to address and knew how to change - rather than just saying something vague like "get in shape." This means that some of the items on my list seem kind of silly or weird since I have the same concept a lot of people do - that new years resolutions have to be something grand - but it's also empowering to looks at the list and feel like all those things I wrote down are attainable if I just use my time productively and stop being lazy about certain habits I've developed.
Are you setting any goals for yourself this year? What do you do to keep yourself on track when you set goals?
I have a lot of goals this year, and I don't expect to be perfect at all of them, but I intend to work on all of them, and that's better than doing nothing :) I usually write them down in my planner as well as on a whiteboard and on sticky notes in front of my laptop, that way when I'm tempted to pretend I have nothing to do, I can see my goals in front of me and remind myself to work on them, even just a little ^^ I usually get on my own case about things, and I like holding myself accountable by having something like "I worked on my story" to report to my husband each day when he gets home. Making little goals day by day helps too (even like, I'm going to sit here for 30 minutes doing nothing but trying to write/writing before I can watch TV/play games/etc), because even if you don't get something great out of it, you are building self discipline, which helps a lot with meeting your goals :)
ReplyDeleteThat's a good idea, to have them written down in multiple places, especially in front of the computer :P I could really do with starting something like making myself write for a while before letting myself do other things. I think I'll try that out :)
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