We are back! That’s right, with the start of a new year comes new posts and new ideas from the Dream Anvil! My long hiatus from the site was a side effect of preparing for and then going through my surgery and recovery. In short, everything went smoothly! Last year was a huge, crazy, tumultuous, and amazing experience and I cannot wait to tell you all about it! Today though, as is our usual tradition here at the Dream Anvil, we are going to kick this year off right by talking about how to set and achieve those New Years’ resolutions.
Every year, millions of people from all across the world choose Jan. 1st as the day when they will achieve their dreams. They will lose weight, treat themselves better, find love, finish that project they’ve talked about for the past ten years. Then every year, around February, millions of people toss their hands up and think it would be better to try again next year. Here’s the thing, your dreams, goals, and aspirations are not impossible, you are just setting your goals wrong. I hear the same lists of resolutions every year, lose weight, treat myself better, find love, but these are just nebulous concepts. How will you lose weight? What will you use to measure treating yourself better? How exactly will you find love? This kind of goal setting is why so many people think that setting a New Year’s resolution is pointless because there is no way to achieve something that is just a concept. These ideas are too vague to be goals, and they set us up for failure right out of the gate.
Your dreams, goals, aspirations are not impossible, you are just setting your goals wrong.
So, how do we set better goals? Today let’s focus on bringing those goals into greater clarity. Write down what it is you want to do this year. I mean specifically. Start with what you have already then fill in the blanks. How will you achieve this goal, when will you do it by, is there a place you have to go to achieve it? Do you want to lose 10 pounds or 50? By what time? Would it be better to focus on an activity or diet changes to achieve this? For example, I will lose 30 pounds by June of this year and I will do this by maintaining a specific calorie count and by doing at least three physically straining activities a week. There is not a lot of ambiguity in there is there? I have a concrete goal and a plan on how I will achieve it. I can’t say to myself “Oh, just one more doughnut,” or “Today is a free day, time for video games,” because I am starting out with a specific goal and a plan in mind. I have a time frame to do it and a method of achieving it all baked in! There is not a lot of wiggle room there and I am therefore more likely to stick to my goal from the start.
If there is only one thing to take away from this month about goal setting, please remember to set specific goals. In the past, I used to set ambiguous, unstructured goals; all of which languished for weeks before I would give up on them. I was one of the people who thought setting a New years resolution was pointless because I felt like I could never achieve them. That changed when I started to be specific about what I wanted to achieve. Setting a specific goal is the very best way to eventually achieve that goal. The more specificity that is included the better, because very specific, detailed goals are more likely to include other elements that also increase your likelihood of success. These are called SMART goals, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. Together these smart measures work together to hold us accountable and keep us on the right path while we aim for our goals. We are going to talk more about the other smart measures this month so come back next Thursday at 7pm for more on how you can achieve your goals in 2020!