Happy New Year!
New Year New Me?
You don’t need a new you – you need to make changes so you can appreciate the YOU that is here now. God created you from love for love and when you remind yourself of that and you get back to that purpose, your perception of yourself will change.
Setting short term goals that are achievable, measurable, and aligned with your values and vocation is how you are going to be able to move forward instead of feeling stuck! But don’t get sucked into the idea that you need to make sweeping changes to your life or that you need to change everything about yourself. You will set yourself up for failure.
Important Points
1 – short term – starting out, set a 30 day goal. Your brain needs time to adjust to this new change. Your brain can get overwhelmed if you are looking too far into the future.
2 – attainable and measurable – this goal needs to be something you can easily keep track of. You need to be working on it every day. You need to be keeping track of your progress.
3 – mindset – you need to work on your mindset around this goal every day especially if this is a new “good” habit that you are taking on to combat something that you don’t like about yourself. If your evening routine is sitting on the couch and watching TV, then what do you need to believe to motivate you to go for a walk instead? Repeat this mindset daily – hourly if you need to!
4 – values and vocation – is this goal aligned with your moral values and your life’s purpose and responsibilities? If you are a mother of three busy teens, it’s going to be difficult to carve out time for a once a week class if the time conflicts with their activities. But maybe you can find something on-line. Or maybe that part of this goal needs to be completed during their summer break. Can you ask your partner to take on some of the kid activities? Or will you feel like you are missing out? Pray about this. Make sure you are feeling fulfilled.
5 – Resources – do you actually have the time, money, mental bandwidth to complete this goal? If not, is there something smaller you can do now that will help you work towards this larger goal? Maybe you need to set a spending/saving goal this month so you can pay for a class next month. If you have a current obligation that conflicts with the class you want to take, can you release that obligation or find someone else that can handle it for you. If you feel like you never stick with a goal, are you going to be able to complete the goal before you? Some of these issues require you to start a mindset and journaling practice so that you can move forward with setting other goals.
Small changes lead to bigger ones
The good news is that you don’t need to change yourself. You only need to make a small improvement. This small improvement and the quick success will help you make more improvements which eventually lead to the larger change! But by then, you won’t even notice it because the change has happened so gradually.
That’s why journaling and accountability are so important. You want to be able to look back from where you started.
Coaching has been incredibly helpful for me in this area. It’s where I learned about making small changes based on short term goals. It’s the basis for the changes I’ve seen in my mindset, my health, and my relationships. A change in one area of your life will improve another area of your life!
If you are looking to make some changes in your life, check out the life wheel to help you figure out a starting point! And let’s talk – coaching can help!
For more: https://yourlifetransfigured.podbean.com/e/ep-11-resolutions-vs-goal-setting/
