The year 2020 is upon us and so instead of deciding on New Year’s resolutions this year, I have opted to be a goal-setter, and here’s why…
A goal is an idea of the future or desired result that a person or a group of people envisions, plans and commits to achieve. People endeavour to reach goals within a finite time by setting deadlines.
I suppose the keyword here is deadlines. And maybe this is why so many New Year’s resolutions fail because we often fail to be date and time specific.
A goal sounds much more focused, and is something you work towards, and so the likelihood of sticking to it will inevitably be much higher as opposed to a resolution, which eventually eludes us at some point, because they are often unattainable.
For example, if I made the following resolution: ‘I am not going to eat any sweets during the week from the 1st January’, other than not eating a sweet every day, there is nothing to measure your behaviour or progress. And when you do ‘give in’ and have a sweet during the week, the guilt is enough to make you give up on the resolution.
However, if I made this my goal: ‘I aim to lose 2kg in two months’, there is room to ‘give in’ and there is an element of grace in your daily living, because the aim isn’t to not eat a sweet, it is lose weight over a certain period of time. This removes the element of guilt and the feeling that you cannot achieve your goal.
Setting a goal means that you develop a habit of your desired behaviour, and losing weight, to use our example above, and eating healthy then becomes an easier way of living.
The beauty of a goal as opposed to a resolution, is that there is a reward at the end of it. And this reward is what will keep you going when you have a hard day and go off track.
It’s also normal to have more than one goal, whereas it seems standard to only have one new year’s resolution per year, so stretch yourself and write your goals down.
May 2020 be the year where you achieve all you set out to do.
