It’s New Year’s Day and I’ve woken up to posts of ‘you are enough’ and ‘don’t do resolutions because you’re already awesome’ and whilst I agree in principle I think the real revolution is to own your goals.
Be your best self
It’s never time to do things because you feel you should, I’m not an advocate of ‘new year, new you’ but I am an advocate of being the best version of you. For me, it’s about sticking to what’s important to you (your values), believing that you’re worthy of being your best self and having confidence in yourself to make a lasting change. If you want to reset or change your habits; that’s great.
Remember that this is about celebrating all of you; who you are now and who you have been. I know I’m grateful for the lessons I’ve learned, even if they’ve been hard at the time because without them I wouldn’t have to fight or built the resilience I have now that will serve me well in the future. I wouldn’t know who I am and what I stand for.
This isn’t about saying that you’re not awesome just how are, that’s a given. So if you choose not to make any resolutions, that’s OK. You don’t have to but that needs to be a conscious, mindful choice. However, if setting goals for the new year is something you want to do for yourself then read on.
Time to draw a line in the sand
Whilst you can set goals all year, starting any day, for many people, the first day of the year is a line in the sand and I and many others use that line to make a change.
I have written about a no – resolution revolution before, where instead of resolutions, which we often choose based on stopping a negative action, we choose to take positive actions.
There are a few steps to follow and it will take you about three hours. Grab a pen and paper…
- What did you set out to achieve last year? Did you achieve it? If not, why not? This is the time to be really honest with yourself – if it wasn’t a priority, that’s ok.
- What are you disappointed with? Why? Disappointment is good…it shows you care!
- What did you learn?
- What does your best self look and feel like?
- What are your priorities?
- Based on the information above, what are your top ten goals for this year?
- What will you put in place to help you achieve them?
Creating successful goals
The main thing is that you choose goals that are meaningful to you. That way, you’re much more likely to keep going. Do you what though? If you stall or stop completely for a time (or even forever), that’s OK too. There are three additional things that are important about goals
- You only need to meet 85% of a goal to consider it a success. Anything more than that is a bonus.
- If it’s not working, change it, delegate it or ditch it.
- Be realistic. Better to stretch the goal as you achieve it rather than set an impossible goal and beat yourself when you can’t achieve it.
The final thing I’d say is make a plan. I use the 12 week year format and this year I’m combining that with a monthly review in my journal. Why is this important? Because writing down your goals and creating an action plan means you’re much more likely to be successful and what’s the point if you’re not aiming for success right?!