New Year’s resolutions are one of the most commonly made and most rarely completed goals. By this time of the New Year, many New Year’s resolutions and goals that have been made have also been abandoned.
Why does this happen?
You may be motivated to achieve your New Year’s resolution in the first few weeks of the new year, but without having smaller goals and deadlines it may be impossible to achieve your overall goal or resolution. Goal setting plays a major role in being productive and successful. Without a smaller step first, motivation and momentum toward the completion of the ultimate goal can get lost. Goal setting tricks your brain into working with you, rather than against you.
Setting one big goal for the whole year is great, in theory. The problem with only having one goal is that you have given yourself the whole year to do that one thing. Why would you start working toward that goal in January when you have the rest of the year to do it? Before you know it, it’s December and you are no closer to completing that goal than you were almost a year ago. Procrastination will very quickly get you off track with your goal and kill any of the motivation that you had in the beginning. Setting smaller, more easily achieved goals will keep your motivation high and keep you on track to complete that BIG goal.
Goal setting is important with any aspect of our lives. We can use this practice of setting short-term goals with anything that we do. Rather than saving up tasks to complete later, set yourself a goal for when that should be done, and do it. Putting off tasks or things that you want to do isn’t doing you any favors. Regularly people talk about all the traveling they would like to do or the new skills they are going to learn as soon as they retire, but how many people actually do anything that they talked about? Often, we continue doing the same thing today that we did yesterday.
If you want to travel to Paris “someday”, but you don’t know how to speak French, and you haven’t started saving….
BIG DREAM: Visit Paris in 2025.
SMALL GOALS:
- Learn French by starting to take classes today and download Babble so I can practice.
- Start saving $200 per month for my trip to Paris.
You can see the difference between the big dream and the small goals.
Don’t wait until tomorrow to start working toward that BIG DREAM! Setting those small goals will mean you are ready when the opportunity arrives on your doorstep. Take small achievable steps today toward what you would like to do later. You will find that you get there before you know it!
BEST OF LUCK IN ALL YOUR DREAMS!
And if you need help in planning to achieve your dreams, contact our office today!