How to Set Better Goals
Happy New Year!
The New Year is filled with excitement and hope for a fresh start. There is an incredible collective energy in the new year because so many people are tuning into their wants, needs, and behaviors and feeling motivated to make changes toward the future they want. So, let’s talk about resolutions and goals!
Goals can be incredible! They can energize and move us toward the life we want for ourselves, or they can be a total waste of time when set incorrectly. Worse, they can be damaging; a draining reminder of our shortcomings that leave us feeling poorly about ourselves. Unfortunately, most goals fall into the latter two categories, are short-lived, and could be more helpful to the person who set them.
Since goals and resolutions can positively or negatively impact your mental health, it’s essential to set the right goals.
How do you set positive, healthy goals? You evaluate your starting point to determine what areas you need goals in, focus on how you want to feel, break your goals down into small action steps, create goals that focus on the process, not the outcome, identify potential barriers to success, and make your goals realistic.
How to Set Healthy Goals:
1. Evaluate Your Starting Point
How have you been feeling about your life lately? What areas of your life feel great? Are there any areas of your life that feel lacking or unfulfilling?
To set meaningful goals, you must know what areas of your life your goals need to be centered around. Here are some general categories of your life to consider- Work, School, Personal Development, Family, Friends, Spirituality, Free Time/Hobbies, Health, and Home. Feel free to take, leave, or rename any of these categories as you evaluate your life. Once you know which areas of your life you want to improve, you can thoughtfully consider goals that will get you to your desired outcome.
2. Focus on How You Want to Feel
For a goal to have significance and to be worth pursuing, it needs to embody a feeling you hope to achieve. So many people make the wrong goals for themselves. When thinking of a goal, ask yourself, “Why do I want this? Why does this matter to me?” The answer is your actual goal, your healthy goal.
Let’s look at a common goal- “I want to lose 20 pounds.” Why do you want to lose 20 pounds? Do you want to feel sexy? Do you want to feel healthy and full of energy? Do you want to be able to move your body without pain? Do you want to be confident? What reason do you have for wanting to lose weight? Do you think it will make you happier and you desperately want to be happier? Whatever your underlying reasons- that is your actual, healthy goal! So make it the goal, not the weight loss. Weight loss was simply what you imagined would help you achieve the desired feeling; it wasn’t the primary goal.
When you focus on how you want to feel and make that your goal, the following steps become so much easier.
3. Break Down Your Goal into Small Action Steps
Sometimes our goals are big and lofty. We have to break them down into small, actionable steps to know exactly what we need to do to achieve the bigger vision.
“Feel My Best” becomes -> Move my body 3x a week for 10 minutes, find a new therapist who feels like an excellent match for me, do a daily affirmation, schedule annual teeth cleaning and doctor’s appointment, stretch before bed for 5 minutes each night.
Suddenly a vast idea or vision for our lives becomes attainable with these smaller action steps. It also informs us so we can build the proper habits and changes that will result in a bigger overall goal for the year. Here’s one more for good measure.
“Love My People Well” becomes this set of actionable steps –> Write and send birthday cards to family members and friends. Welcome parents to their new house with a housewarming gift. Help my sister repaint the baby’s room before her due date. Have a monthly relationship check-in with my spouse. Lift my friends up by celebrating their accomplishments with them.
4. Create Goals that Focus on the Process, Not the Outcome
Healthy, achievable goals focus on the journey. When we set goals that focus on the outcome, we fool ourselves into thinking we have control of the end result, which sets us up for significant disappointment, sadness, anger, and anxiety when things don’t go our way.
How do you want to change to help achieve your desires in life? Focus on yourself- your thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. You are the only thing you can control.
Here are some tangible examples:
Unhealthy goal– Get into grad school.
Healthy goal– Put together an amazing application for grad school.
Unhealthy goal- Lose 20 pounds.
Healthy goal– Move my body 3x a week for 10 minutes.
Unhealthy goal– Start our family.
Healthy goal– Try to start our family.
Comparing each of these goals, the “healthy” version of the goal focuses on things you can control- your attitude and your effort. Never put unhealthy, unnecessary pressure on yourself to do the impossible- totally control the product. That would require you to control everything- the people reading college applications, your internal body processes, you and your partner’s fertility, the economy and job market, etc. If you fool yourself into believing you can control everything, the world will kick your butt and prove you wrong.
5. Identify Potential Barriers to Success
We face many obstacles when trying to change our lifestyle or behavior. Among these potential obstacles are a lack of motivation, fear of failure or rejection, world changes (like the economy or a global pandemic), lack of information, lack of a system that supports our goals, and more. It’s helpful to identify potential obstacles between where you are now and where you hope to go. Once you identify the barriers you are likely to face, you can brainstorm possible solutions or ways to avoid the obstacle altogether.
An example from my own life is having a goal to scrapbook more. Last year I identified that the biggest obstacle that prevented me from being creative was that my environment did not support that goal. My craft room had become a work and school office during the pandemic and I had too many craft supplies. The room was messy and overwhelming; I would actively avoid spending time there. Once I recognized the obstacles to my success in crafting more, I eliminated those obstacles. I got an office job, which permanently houses all of my work things that used to be in the craft room. My office also allowed for proper work/life separation so that my craft room wasn’t associated with the stress and obligations of work. Next, I did a major decluttering of my craft supplies. My craft room needed breathing room and peacefulness to become a room I wanted to spend time in. I also craft more often when I’m not overwhelmed with the number of supplies or options I have while scrapbooking. I eliminated these obstacles to my goal of scrapbooking and crafting more often, which led to me successfully crafting far more in 2022 than in the previous year.
Identify the things likely to hold you back from your goals and eliminate them. This proactive mindfulness will help you achieve your goals far faster and easier.
6. Make Your Goals Realistic.
One of the biggest mental obstacles that threaten to derail us from our goals is the negative feelings that accompany failure. We become paralyzed with a negative view of ourselves when we feel defeated, ashamed, and guilty. We start to believe that we are incapable, lazy, unsuccessful, and not worthy of the vision we had set for our future. This kind of self-belief is incredibly damaging to our self-esteem, our confidence, and our motivation.
The crazy thing is most failed goals aren’t a result of us being totally incompetent; they result from the goal being unrealistic. Avoid this whole mental mind-suck and make sure your goals are realistic.
If you’d like to feel stronger, don’t set a goal of working out for 30 minutes 5x a week. You’ve spent the past year being a couch potato. Expecting yourself to immediately go from never working out to working out every weekday is silly. Most people don’t successfully build healthy habits and lifestyle changes this way. Most people who set a goal that large will end up in that cycle of falling short, feeling defeated, then giving up entirely. Make that goal super realistic.
My version would be “moving my body 3s a week for 5 minutes”. 5 minutes is so manageable you have no excuse to keep you from doing it in an average week. 3xs a week is a minimal barrier to success while still being frequent enough that it is building a habit and lifestyle shift. The term “moving your body” also allows for different forms of exercise. One day it might be taking your dog for a walk. Another day it might be dancing to 2 of your favorite songs. It could be a gentle yoga stretch at home or a workout in the gym. If you’re flexible about how you reach the goal, you’re way more likely to achieve it. Remember, your version of realistic may not be the same as mine. Maybe it’s 1x a week for 2 minutes or 4x a week for 10 minutes- whatever is achievable for you in your current season of life.
The lower the barrier to your goals’ success, the more energy and conviction you’ll have to make them happen! These positive feelings will help you take action and achieve your goals, which will set you up for making larger goals later if your overall vision for your future is still bigger than “realistic goals.
Now that you know these 6 strategies for creating great goals for yourself, I’d love to hear what goals you’re working towards this year. Which of these strategies hit home for you? I hope you feel the magic of new beginnings and tap into the positive energy of setting good, meaningful, achievable goals for yourself. You’re worth the effort and intentionality toward making your dream life a reality.
Cheers