It is a natural human instinct and response for us to set goals, and it is also natural for humans to get sidetracked and not complete those goals. Putting pressure on yourself to meet those goals can be disruptive to our mental well-being. So if a few weeks back you made a New Year’s resolution and haven’t stuck to it, you are not alone, far from it, you are only human. You may have set goals to exercise more, maybe a healing kick, weight loss, bodybuilding, or find happiness or maybe you just wanted to find the courage and motivation to ask for changes in your personal life, work life or social life (Dynes, 2008).
Don’t fret if you are one of the side-tract people, you are allowed to make goals whenever you want to and don’t need a New Year to roll around to improve your happiness or self-esteem. You have the ability to reach any achievement that you have set your goal to meet and be successful (Poulsen et al., 2015).
All you need to do to achieve your goals is to decide what you want, set your goal, make it happen, and know what it looks like. Most importantly show yourself kindness on those days when things don’t go to plan (Smith, 1999). Start with small goals, an example may be that you want to improve your fitness and exercise goals. So start by fitting in a five-minute walk, increase by a minute every day for three weeks and you will have achieved two things. You will have achieved improved time walking, now at 25 minutes and you will have also made walking a habit, not all habits are bad for us (Poulsen et al., 2015).
Many of you will have heard of smart goals, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. An overview of this method of setting goals is that goals need to be fit into a single sentence, we need to know what success looks like, we need to know that we can achieve the goals without obstacles, and they need to be what we need and not just what we think we should have and they need to have a start and end point. If you follow this pathway in goal setting you can have the belief in your own mental well-being leads you to a more fulfilled and self-confident self (Smith, 1999). Remember, goals can be for anything such as self-confidence, improved exercise routines, improving nutrition, completing an educational course, or being more cheerful, there are many goals that we can strive for and many outcomes of those goals to success (Dynes, 2008).
If you are interested in a roadmap for setting goals, come back next week, when I will outline SMART goals and how to make them suit your own personal situation, you will need a pen and a piece of paper. For now, ponder on what goals you want to achieve. Are you ready to plan for successful goal outcomes? Do you have hopes and beliefs that you want to make real?
References
Boogaard, K. (2021, December 26). How to write SMART goals (with examples). Atlassian Retrieved January 13, 2023, from https://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/how-to-write-smart-goals
Dynes, R. (2008). Hopes and Dreams – Developing Potential: A Practical Approach to Developing Potential. Taylor & Francis.
Poulsen, A. A., Cuskelly, M., & Ziviani, J. (Eds.). (2015). Goal Setting and Motivation in Therapy: Engaging Children and Parents. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Smith, D. K. (1999). Make success measurable! : a mindbook-workbook for setting goals and taking action (New York ed.). Wiley.
