A Different Way To Achieve Your Goals This Year

I noticed something about my life, which maybe you’ve noticed in your own life, which is I have a hard time sticking to New Year’s resolutions generally.

In fact, in preparation for this article, I was going to share with you my New Year’s resolutions and go over all of the goals that I set in January of last year.

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I’ll mention which goals I achieved and which I miserably failed, but I couldn’t find them. ANYWHERE.

I don’t even know or remember what my goals even were, I don’t know if I hit them, but chances are, I probably didn’t.

How To Achieve Your Goals This Year

The goal of this article is that by the time you’ve read it, two things will happen:

A different way of goal setting for New Year.

I’ve been thinking about how I’ve been setting goals over the past few years and the ones that have worked for me and the ones that haven’t and I’ve come to a conclusion.

I don’t believe that very specific metric-based goals really work for me.

For example, writing 100 articles for my blog, or losing 15-20 pounds, or anything like that.

I’ve found that metrics aren’t really motivational. Their purpose is to notice if you go in the right direction.

Have a theme for the new year Instead

Let’s say your goal for this year was to lose 30 pounds, but 6 months in you’ve gained 5, then that is an indication that you’re moving in the opposite direction of your goals, and not toward them.

I got the inspiration for this article from Rebel Wilson, if you’ve seen the movie Pitch-perfect you probably know her by the name “Fat Amy”.

Rebel Wilson was on the heavier side, and in 2020 she made a change. She called it “A year of health”, and during 2020 she lost nearly 60 pounds (almost 30kg!).

Seeing her drastic physical change got me very inspired and motivated, and I think that will do the same for you.

During an interview I really like the idea of having a theme or direction for the year, something that is simple and easier to remember and keep you motivated throughout the year.

Having a cornerstone that you can come back to again and again, something like your own Northstar, I think that it’s more powerful than having a very specific metric that you wanna hit.

“Even if you have to crawl towards your goals, keep going, it will be worth it, try to give a little bit of effort each day. I know somedays are frustrating as hell, you’ll feel like giving up, you’ll get annoyed by the lack of progress, but good things are coming your way.”

-Rebel Wilson.

This is a perfect illustration of why having a theme for the year, is better than having a specific milestone to achieve.

If you’ve tried to lose weight in the past, you know that sometimes you lose a lot of weight, sometimes you lose a little bit of weight, other times it’s like the scale doesn’t want to come down at all.

You and I know pretty well how frustrating losing weight can be, and that some days you feel like giving up.

Related Post: What Is A Growth Mindset? Growth Vs Fixed Mindset

be flexible.

I’d like you to put yourself in Rebel’s shoes for a moment.

She decided that in January she’d want to be healthier, to look and feel better, to be confident in her own skin, etc. And then, we all know what happened, the coronavirus crisis.

Gyms closed, and many if not all countries in the world went into quarantine.

She probably had all these different goals I mentioned above, and she may even had different routines organized to help her succeed them, and all of them got blown away by the pandemic.

What if one of her metrics was to go to the gym every single day?

That would have completely destroyed her goal, but, because she had a theme for the year, she was able to make the right choices.

“I’ve been doing a lot of working out which was hard with the coronavirus restrictions, because I had to go to the park, laying on the dirt and doing sit-ups.”

-Rebel Wilson.

She was used to going to a nice, clean gym but, instead, she had to go to the park and work out outside, which might have been very different from what she had in mind. The key point here is that she was able to be flexible about it.

“The gym is closed, I can either go work out in the park or just lay around on the couch.” If you have the “Year of health” in mind, which is the healthier choice to make? Probably the first one.

But, it wasn’t just about physical health, it was a mental thing as well. She realized that her mental state was the factor of the choices she was making in regards to her physical health.

“It’s not like I wanted to lose weight and get to a certain number on the scale. It was more than that. It’s about dealing mentally with why I was overeating, and I had a job where I was paid a lot of money to be overweight, which can kind of mess with your head a bit. I think I was emotionally eating and over-eating at times because I wasn’t loving myself enough either.”

How To Achieve Your Goals This Year.

I really think that it’s a powerful thing to realize, to help you better your mental health is to know that everything starts from the inside.

Although Rebel Wilson had a theme of the year in mind, she did had a metric-based goal she wanted to achieve.

“Even tho, it’s not about the number, it’s about being healthy, I needed a tangible measurement to have as a goal, and that was 75kg”.

I believe that it’s a good thing do to. To mix these to. Have some metrics you want to reach, but in the end it’s really all about the direcion you’re choosing.

Let’s say 6 months into the year you realize that, you are nowhere near your goal of 75kg for example, and that you can’t achieve it by the end of the year either. What do you think will happen?

Well, that might cause you to give up and to abandon your goal.

This is literally what happened to me in 2019 if I remember correctly. I had a goal of meditating for 30 minutes, every single day. And I was crushing it.

I meditated 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes before bed until someday I went out with my friends, had a couple of drinks and I went home late and I totally forgot to meditate.

The next day, I was beating myself up, thinking that I lost the streak and wondering what’s the point of continuing.

I tried to keep it up but the thought of not being able to say that I’ve meditated every single day for 30 minutes, caused me to abandon my goal.

It even caused me to pull away from meditation for a significant amount of time, for 5-6 months.

It was probably the longest amount of time I went without meditating since I started. This was terrible because I know meditation really helps me.

And I’m pretty sure it has happened to almost all of you.

So, focus on the progress and not on perfection.

That’s why having a theme for the year is really helpful. It allows you to hold ideas, routines, concepts and hopes a little more loosely, rather than so tight.

If you hold things too tightly, it can cause stress and anxiety, just like with my goal of meditating.

And it’s really ironic if you think so because meditation helps you deal with stress and anxiety.

How To Achieve Your Goals This Year – Conclusion

Hopefully, you’ve thought a potential theme that you want for the new year. Now, you have to ask yourself:

• What areas do I want to grow in the new year?
• Is there a part of my life that can be improved in some way?
• By improving this area of my life, is it going to have a positive effect on the other areas of my life?

When you choose a theme for the new year, you might also be able to come up with some sort of metrics that will complement your theme.

This will give you some milestones that can help you indicate if you are headed in the right direction.

Keep in mind that you might not hit every single milestone, because things change, and the past few years have taught us this.

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