New Years Resolutions
January is here. The holidays were fun celebrating with family and friends. They consisted of giving and receiving presents, eating too much, and staying up late. It was sad saying goodbye as everyone left to return home and it was a little sad taking down all the decorations knowing that it will be another year before the spirit of the holidays are back. However, you cleaned as you took everything down, and now your house feels clean and smells clean. Your fresh house is ready for the new year and you want to feel that way too. You reflect back on the past year, grab a pen and some paper, and feeling starry-eyed and hopeful, begin to write down your future disappointments.
When I was little I always wondered why we could only make goals at the start of a new year. Now I wonder why do we only make goals at the start of the new year?
New Years Resolutions.
New YEAR’s Resolutions?
Why is it an unspoken thing that we wait for the new year to begin a goal and we make the goal last a year?
A year is a long time and in a way, we are setting ourselves up for that future disappointment as we more so write down our “wishes” for the year. As much as we all want a lamp to rub, we don’t have a genie to make our dreams come true. Though we are capable of amazing things, the hidden truth is that the way we tackle our goals is what sets us up for success. For instance, you can’t hope to become “shredded” if you have never been to the gym before, you can’t hope to become proficient at an instrument if you’ve never touched it, and you can’t hope to become a millionaire if you don’t know how to handle money.
Goals take time. Success takes time. While all those examples are certainly achievable they might not be so within a year. That’s okay!! It’s okay because life is hard and changing and busy and things come our way we don’t plan for. We can want so much that we expect too much too soon and it does break our hearts -if only a little bit- if we can’t make it happen.
We need to love ourselves enough to want to become the best versions of ourselves, but we also need to have compassion and show grace. It’s a balancing act that truly does take time.
HOWEVER, the way to not fall into the hope turned disappointment trap is to make sure you succeed at all of your goals.
Let me explain:
You often hear the question what are your long-term goals vs your short-term goals? Or rather, what are your goals for the next 10-15 years vs what are your goals for the next 1-2 years? I see it this way: what are your looonnnnngggg-term goals meaning your whole lifetime and short-term meaning today, immediately. Thinking this way, essentially everything we can think of as a goal is categorized into short term. So does that means we don’t have long-term goals? Yes and no…
To illustrate, some of my “long-term” goals are to get married, be successful, create memories through experiences, make an impact on the world/others, and find happiness. The kicker with these “long term” goals is that I can’t tell you when or who I am going to marry, I can’t tell you what is going to make me successful, and I can’t tell you what experiences I am going to have that will create a lasting memory because I don’t know and I can’t measure the amount of time it will take. What I can tell you is that these things are what I want out of life; these things are what I believe will bring me a happy and fulfilled life yet it will be my whole lifetime of me trying to achieve these.
So short term.
It is nice to have an overview of things you want to achieve which I think New Year’s Resolutions are more of. The actual goals themselves, however, are going to be successful by the way we tackle them. The way to tackle them is to put them in a “shorter-term” in other words shorten them. If we make them shorter and shorter easier and easier it’s almost impossible not to achieve them.
Think of your goals like a nesting doll. The first one, the biggest, is your overview or New Year’s Resolution. As you open the doll and find a smaller one and then open that one and find a smaller one so on and so forth you are revealing a smaller part of your goal that you can accomplish. You are breaking it down to the smallest most basic first step.
Maybe my goal is to learn how to make the perfect cinnamon roll. Here is how I dissect that.
Goal overview: Make the perfect cinnamon roll.
In order to do that I need to practice practice practice as practice make perfect.
In order to practice I need ingredients.
To get ingredients I need to go grocery shopping.
In order to go grocery shopping, I need to know the recipe I am using.
To find a recipe I need to look through my cookbooks.
To look through my cookbooks I need to find my cookbooks.
To find my cookbooks I need to get up off the couch to look.
So right now my goal isn’t to make the perfect cinnamon roll, it is to get off the couch and look for my cookbooks.
You can break down your goal step by step, down months to weeks to days however it will work for you, but as someone who can get easily overwhelmed my advice is to make them as simple as possible so you can take that first step.
Moreover, I think this is a strategy we can use every day in our lives. As I have applied it to my life I have been able to be in the present more instead of always looking into the future hoping I reach my goal. Now I am asking myself what can I do first, what can I do now?
“Goal” is a powerful word that we can apply every day to our typical mundane tasks. Instead of I have to get all of the laundry done today try my goal is to get the laundry done today. Instead of a to-do list make it a goal list. You don’t have to do anything so don’t make yourself. Make it something you want to accomplish by making it a goal.
One of my favorite things is to plan the night before. I ask myself what is my purpose tomorrow? It might be something as trivial as my purpose tomorrow is to run errands so my goals for tomorrow are to go grocery shopping, drop off packages, go to the bank, and wash my car.
Overall, we have our long-term goals which are the things that we believe will bring us happiness in this life. We have our short-term goals beginning with an overview then simplifying and simplifying until we can’t not take the first step. Finally, we have our everyday goals. Changing the have to’s into a positive goal-oriented mindset.
If you’re wondering where to start I think picking a goal in each of the 8 categories of wellness is the place to begin. You can click HERE to take my self-reflection quiz which will hopefully give you some ideas of goals you can make in each category.
If you are someone like me who needs to write out my goals so I can physically see them, shop my Etsy!
Best wishes for a happy new year!
xxx Karlie
