Help in Achieving Your Goals…and a Tangent on Habits

Setting goals is exhilarating and January is a natural time to set new ones for the year but here’s a tweak in the schedule to help attain them.

MAKE SEASONAL GOALS

Instead of setting one big goal at the beginning of the year, set several smaller goals throughout the year. Conveniently, society has divided our calendar year into four parts: winter, spring, summer, and fall.

What makes seasonal goals so effective? Three reasons…

Your life is your story. Write well. Edit often.

Seasonal goals last a relatively short space of time.- Each season is roughly three months long. Yeah, that’s a chunk of time but adults know how fast a season comes and goes. If we know going in that we don’t have to do something for months and months and months than it’s much less of a burden.

Be thankful for what you are now and keep fighting for what you want to be tomorrow.

Seasonal goals fit who you are RIGHT NOW.- Life changes pretty quickly and one might be in a totally different space within a six month period.
Why set a yearly goal when it will probably have to be adjusted anyway? This winter my seasonal goal is to do one of my physical therapy exercises everyday. Will I do it forever? Probably not. But it should increase my well being right now and probably into the future. And who knows, doing it regularly for a substantial period of time may prove how worthwhile it is and become a habit. Speaking of habits…

Good habits are the bomb. The goal of a goal can be to achieve something specific and measurable (Always good. Here’s info on SMART goals if you’re not familiar…I digress) like losing 20 lbs or going to France. A goal can also lead one to the realm of establishing a healthy habit which is awesome because habits require so much less brain and willpower. Did you achieve your series of goals incrementally increasing your steps until you’re at the level you want? That means you’ve also built a system of having comfy shoes and umbrella readily available, knowing the routes where you don’t have to fight traffic, and finding inside options when the weather is ridiculous. Using goals to establish a habit that feeds into what’s important to you is so worthwhile. Anyway back to goals…

There are two options: Make progress or make excuses.

Seasonal goals help keep ones momentum.– Because seasonal goals are short they feel somewhat fresh and exciting. However, if the honeymoon is already almost over for you and your current goal (I’ve read that the vast majority of resolution makers have broken them by the second week of January.), remember your next new and more awesome goal is just around the corner; hang in there! You only have a little while longer and then you can say, “I did it!…And now I can do something else.”

Like (almost) everyone else, I struggle keeping up my goals. This technique of seasonal goals has helped me; may it help you as we put a first foot into the new year. Cheers!