Goals: The Importance of Reflection
This is the Imagine mosaic in Strawberry Fields, Central Park, New York. Imagine spoke to me as I thought about goals.
It’s that time again where many people make New Years Resolutions. I was reading about the difference between a resolution and a goal and there is a variety of opinions; none of which I believed matter in the end. Call it what you choose: resolution, goal or intention. I believe the more important thing is that you set goals, write them down and revisit them often to check on your progress.
I was working on setting my 2020 goals, and reflecting back on my 2019 goals was an essential starting point. I set 21 goals at the beginning of 2019. Some of these were finite – I would know when I achieved them. Some were more infinite and are part of an ongoing process. Out of my 21 goals, I fully achieved 10 of them and made progress on many others. Some I didn’t make any progress on. When I reflect back, I look at the goals that I set and write down which ones I achieved, but also write down other accomplishments even if I didn’t set a specific goal. I believe this is important as sometimes our lives shift and focus might change, and it’s valuable to ensure you capture these shifts too. Things sometimes become clearer and what I felt was important at the beginning of the year, might not have been as important at the end, and I might have seen a shortfall or problem part way through the year and wanted to work on it. I am also OK with the fact that I didn’t achieve all my goals. When I wrote down my accomplishments for 2019, I came up with 22 which filled me with pride. Some of these were ideas I had, but I didn’t write them down (I didn’t think to set them up as a goal).
Some of the finite goals I was able to achieve included:
Read 15 books (I actually read 17; possibly more – I realized this year that tracking these types of things is not a focus or strength)
Complete 505 miles for my portion of the Run the Year challenge (intentional miles either walking, running or on the elliptical). (I completed 533 miles)
2019 team miles for the Run the Year 2019 challenge (I can’t really remember how many we got, but we made 2019 by the middle of December). While I couldn’t really control whether my team got out and did their miles, I included this goal as a reminder to cheer them on and try to motivate them.
Scrapbook 100 layouts (I finished my 100th layout December 31, but I did it).
Finish my Amerithon challenge as a team (my friend and I did a virtual challenge where we recorded our walking, running, biking and elliptical miles as we traversed the United States from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to the Washington Monument in Washington, DC. (We arrived in Washington in mid-December).
Some of the infinite goals I was able to make progress on included:
Feel good in skinny jeans (it still depends on the jeans, but I have a couple that I like and wear now).
Keep a zero inbox (I was able to do this sometimes, but not consistently, so I will keep working on it).
Be focused and don’t procrastinate (I became better with time management, but I want to keep working on it and have ideas and plans to improve)
Some of the goals I didn’t achieve include:
Finish my brush calligraphy course (I did well in 2018 as I was allocating time to work on it, but I didn’t do that in 2019 so I made no progress – lesson learned).
Finish the flourish course (same as with the brush calligraphy course).
Create a death info binder (morbid, but I’m a planner and I want to make sure whomever needs to sort out where all our money and documents are can do it easily. I have made this a 2020 goal and broken it down into small portions each month).
Use up my gift cards (oops – I really don’t like having these just sitting in my purse and there have been so many stores here go out of business, so I don’t want to be caught with money I can’t use, so I have a better plan to use them up in 2020)
Improve my handwriting (this is going to get pushed to a longer-term goal as I don’t see it being a priority for 2020)
Some of the accomplishments I didn’t plan for include:
I took my daughter to New York for 6 days (we had planned it, but I didn’t see it as a goal at the beginning of the year. At the end, the fact that I was able to plan and pay for the trip definitely seemed like an accomplishment)
Gave up Coke Zero (I had no idea in January that I even wanted to do this, but it was hard; I felt better in the end and by December 31st, I had not had one in 5.5 months so I definitely felt it was an accomplishment).
Launched my website (I had no plans to build a leadership following and business in January but the fact that I decided to do it and then was able to launch my website felt like an important accomplishment).
Worked on my relationship with my son (I realized as the year progressed that I don’t have as much in common with him as I do my two daughters and he tends to keep to himself, so I have had to work much harder to ensure we have things in common and a strong bond. )
Started saying no (as the year progressed and I plotted my new future, I realized that I was going to have to be much more intentional about what I was giving my time to and I started saying no thank you much more often).
There is much talk about having SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely) and these are extremely important. I think that it’s also important to have bigger or open-ended goals too; even if you don’t achieve them, but rather, make progress towards them, then you are improving yourself which is awesome. And make sure to reflect back and record your accomplishments, even if you didn’t set them out as a goal in the beginning. Give yourself credit for all the awesome things you did.