Goal Setting

Why We Should All Set Goals

On a personal note, l used to think it’s best to have a great number of goals being aspired to at any given time, strength in numbers l thought.  I’m sure I can achieve at least one of these, right?  As l look back l can see why, for the most part, having such a scattered focus to what was important to me led to missed deadlines and in some cases missed opportunities to develop as that time was lost. I now go about things differently when l think of personal development.

 We live in a world where everything is about success, over-achieving, creating the perfect image or persona, keeping up with not only the Joneses, but the Smith’s, the Davidson’s, and the McDougall’s. It can be hard to find the right balance point as to where to spend the right energy for the goals you want to achieve and the life you want to live.

 Often, like fashion fads, personal goals can tend to change as quickly, depending on the latest trend or what you feel sounds cool to say you are working towards. “I’m currently working on a goal to write a paper on 17th Century Russian Czarist regimes” Now, I’m not here to bash that notable interest or passion someone may have. I’m just saying, often the goals we should be focusing on to make our life better for so many reasons, get put to the back burner because they are just too hard for us to sustain. Achieving meaningful goals is hard work!

What is a Goal?

In simple terms, it’s setting your sights on a specific objective or target to accomplish, usually within a given time horizon to get it done. Super easy right?

To list all the potentially amazing and worthwhile goals out there due to the personal nature that drives us all would be an overwhelming task, however, most goals have some form of basic similarity – They are set to enhance our lives. We don’t set a goal to become less healthy or more self-destructive. For sure these things happen to many people, but I’m hard pushed to believe people set goals to achieve these negative end results. Of course, most of us set positive uplifting goals, such as, become healthier, learn a new language, learn how to cook, write a novel or perhaps run a marathon. Maybe the goal is about others, give time to charitable causes or spend more time with your parents, regardless of the goal or personal meaning, these should impact your life positively and create a stronger sense of self.

Select the Right Goal and Stop Comparisons

I think most of us have a sense of what it is we would like to achieve, enhance or improve. Think about what this is to you and do not be derailed by others or what you see on social media.  That is too often the case when goals fail, it likely never really meant that much to you to start with, you were not invested.

Just because your co-worker looks bad*ss playing the jazz piano impromptu at the works holiday party, if you are not inspired by wanting to play the piano, then you will run out of steam with the many hours required in mastering that skill.  Wanting to look bad*ss in front of your coworkers will only get you so far!

Select the goals that you genuinely feel will enhance your life, enrich you with a sense of fulfillment, not just when the goal is attained but also along the process (we’ll get back to that word “Process” later).  It’s also important to be selective or even ruthless when choosing the goals that matter. Like anything in life, you only have so many resources, time, money, energy, and will.  If you simply have too many goals, then it’s not hard to understand when you fail in achieving one if not all of them. Not everything we want to achieve in life has to be a goal, for example getting to the store to buy groceries on a Sunday is not really a goal in the sense we are discussing here. We are talking about pivotal things we want to achieve that improve our lives in more intrinsic ways. So, it’s okay only to have one or just a few goals, this way you can focus on achieving them.

What do l Want to Achieve or Who do l Want to Become?

When l think of the goals I am setting for my own life, I am really thinking more in terms of the person I want to keep evolving into and less about what series of goals l want to strike off the list l made. 

If you reflect on many of your own goals whether you are actually already working toward them or just still in the pondering stage, they say something about who you want to become and not just what you want to achieve.  If you are working toward losing weight or joining a gym to work out more, this speaks to you wanting to be a healthier person and all the other things that come with that.  If you are setting a savings goals, this is more indicative of you becoming a more responsible individual and achieving more with your resources.  Once you set some of these goals, you need to follow through and live by the codes they create.  If losing weight and working out more is your vision, it becomes less attractive to have “cheat days” when you eat junk food, it’s going against who you are becoming.  When you set the goal-based more on the person you are evolving into rather than just an objective, then anything that works away from that journey starts to become less attractive. 

Process Not Just a Goal

OK, so who hasn’t heard the one about “It’s about the journey not just the destination”?

Well, that’s the same as the “process” and the “goal”.  Understanding the importance in this distinction is often what makes the goal achievable.

Think about typically how a goal is set – It’s usually a task or objective with a given deadline of time i.e. a hard end date.  Let’s apply this process to losing weight.  Let’s say you want to lose 30lbs in six months (remember, this is an example, I’m not saying you need to lose 30lbs).  It becomes very difficult to keep motivated to lose that 30lbs as you can’t necessarily see the weight fall off in a day.  This is where we need to turn our attention to the process of how we achieve goals.  At the end of each day, we can be happy and motivated if we followed a process that works towards the “end goal” – no matter how far in advance the goal deadline.  Each day you can set up a part of the process that works toward your ultimate objective.  If you get up and hit the gym or eat a healthy salad, well that day you followed a method that will work towards something you are wanting to achieve and you can be happy as your head hits the pillow at the end of the day, you can receive the immediate “pat on the back” that is much needed for long term goal setting. 

A process becomes the road map, the method, the way, it gives you more manageable time horizons and incremental rewards that keep you on track for the larger change you want to see or that thing you watch to accomplish.  Seeing yourself become stronger, more fluent in a language, cook better meals, have more money in the bank are all signs that the process you are following towards your ultimate goal is working.  We can all set the same goal, often the only difference between the people that achieve theirs and people that don’t is the strength in your process.

So, make your process is easy, predictable and repeatable.  If you want to learn a new language, schedule time to study when you are not tired, find a foreign language talking group that doesn’t require 3 separate bus journeys to get there.  If you want to lose weight, find a gym closer to home with easy parking as opposed to a gym out of the way with no parking, always have the fridge stocked with healthy eating options, otherwise you’ll be calling for take-out food before you can say “I’ll start the diet next week”.

Your process, which should be planned in advance, allows a sense of “auto-pilot” in working towards the big picture.  It takes away the strain of having to figure things out daily regarding how to achieve your ultimate objective.  This allows you to focus entirely on the daily routines and practises that are the building blocks.

Create some visual ques around the house, the office, workshop or wherever you spend lots of time.  We’ve all heard of vision boards, putting our life dreams to pictures and sticking it on a board where it can be viewed daily.  Why not do this with our goals, put a sticky note of positive reinforcement on the bathroom mirror, because when it gets hard to follow your process, you will look for any excuse to quit.  Make it hard to quit.

Stay Positive

Above all else stay positive, changing into a new “you” or adding amazing life enhancing skills to your repertoire, such as speaking a new language or playing an instrument takes time and dedication to accomplish.  You will have days when it will be hard or you fall from your process.  That’s OK, just accept before you even start working toward your goal that this is inevitable.  Dust yourself down and refocus on the fact the goal you selected is worth the frustration, the humility and the time, after all it’s making you a better version of you, and that evolution should never stop because it’s so worth it.

If it Was Easy, Then We’d All be Doing it!

And finally, if becoming a better you, healthier, smarter, more cultured, more learned, a better dancer, more meditative, more compassionate and a great chef was easy, then what would be the point?  We’d all be doing it, we live in a time of the “life hacks” – Now I’m all for saving time when possible, but as often is the case, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.  So set some meaningful goals for yourself and remember you don’t have to wait for New Years Day!

Spencer Bromley