It’s now February and I am guessing that your enthusiasm with regards to your resolutions has started to fizzle out.
According to a 2016 study, only 9% of those who made New Year’s Resolutions have varying degrees of success of keeping them until the end of the year. Such a low success rate and you begin to ask yourself “Why do it anyway?”
But perhaps, there are better ways of nailing those resolutions.
It starts with a vision. How do you see yourself in the future? What kind of life do you want for you?
Jim Rohn, a famous motivational speaker, said that to improve the chance of success for any goal, there should be a compelling or enough reason to achieve such goal. Its purpose should be stronger than its objects. So, for every goal we set, we should have a “why”.
Goal Setting vs Intent
Some people believe that setting our intent is more effective than goal setting. Goal setting is focusing on the future, our desired outcome. Intent focuses on the present and how we want to live each day to attain those desires.
Intent is the energy or the motivation that we put when we start something. Over the course of time, intent becomes the process, thus, we continue to be motivated.
If we are easily disappointed and we immediately give up if one goal fails, then maybe intent setting would be better for us.
Short Term vs. Long Term Goals
Mr. Rohn also said that you should not start a year without finishing it, a month, a week and a day without finishing it. In paper. What he meant is that we don’t end a day unless we have planned for the next day. The same is true for the week, for month and for the year. The plans for the months and years are our long-term goals and the weekly and the daily goals are our short-term plans.
Write Them Down
A study conducted by Dr. Gail Matthews, a Psychology professor at Dominican Republic in California, writing down our goals have a 42% chance of achieving them. Why not, anything that could push us to getting there is welcome.
Writing down our goals help us in our visualization of the future that we want. It provides us clarity and direction on where we are headed. We then align our acts and decisions towards these goals. Writing them down, reviewing our progress every now and then, celebrating our little triumphs keep us motivated to stay in the course. What could be more fulfilling than going over our list and checking each one as we say, done, done done.
Vision Board
Some people are visual. They are stimulated by what they see rather than by what they read. Thus, the birth of the vision boards. Vision boards are visual representations of what we want to achieve. They contain images and texts of all the things we want to be, to have, places to visit, things to accomplish and even inspirations.
Techies have taken it a notch higher by coming up with dream trailer. These are clips of videos of things they want to accomplish. So that when they play it, their ideal life runs before them in vivid colors, complete with voice over.
If we want to take it a notch even higher, we experience what it is like living our dream by attending an open house of the dream house we envisioned for ourselves. Or we go for the test drive of our ideal car or write ourselves a check for the future money that we wish to receive in exchange for our service just like what Jim Carey did when he was just starting. Take your pick.
Aspects of Our Life
To provide more clarity on our vision and to cover the many aspects of our lives, we should have goals in each of these areas: health and fitness, wealth and finance, personal development, work and career, relationship, fun and experiences, and legacy. Your dream travel to Zurich would fall under fun and experiences. Our legacy is how we want to be remembered when we are gone. Sounds morbid. But Stephen Covey, author of 7 Habits Highly Effective People recommends that we make it a part of our life to envision ourselves in our own funeral and see how our loved ones sees us. It keeps us on our toes and do things not just for ourselves. It makes our life more fulfilling and meaningful.
Goal=STP
John Assaraf, a lecturer, entrepreneur, author and behavior expert which focuses on brain training to achieve success, wants us that for every goal that we set, there should be strategy, tactics and process. If the goal is to be 54 kgs, the strategy is planning what to eat and how much. The tactics would be the things that you would do to get to your goal such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator. The process would be the system that you would follow over and over again to get to your goal which could be, in this case, drinking water before every meal. The goal without strategy to achieve it is just a hope, according to Mr. Assaraf.
SMART vs SMARTER Goals
For goals to be (more) achievable, it has to be specific, measurable, actionable, relevant and time- bound. A goal to be healthy becomes more specific if its phrased as to loss five kilograms. It becomes measurable if we (literally) weigh ourselves. It gives us a clue whether we are making any progress. Actionable means that we should have plans or the things that we would do to achieve the goal. Relevant is about having our focus on goals which would provide us more value. By including a timeline to make the goal come into fruition, it allows us to monitor if we are making any headway. Deadline motivates action.
An even “smarter” way of achieving our goal is to add emotion and reward. Goals that are coming from our heart have more sticking power because we want it more. And what is a goal if it is not rewarding.
Best Practice
Above are some thoughts and ideas about goal setting, turning our dreams into reality or sticking to our resolutions, from the experts and the successful. Here’s the catch: Everyone is different. What may work for one may not work for the others. Take the idea that best suits your personality, and the ones that you think would best motivate you to get you to where you want to be.
Strike a balance. Don’t get to caught up into achieving your goals that you forget to live and enjoy life. As Miley Cyrus puts it, ain’t about what’s waitin’ on the other side, it’s the climb.
It’s the little things that we do every day. It’s about being consistent.
Goals are dynamic. Life is a constant change. Stay flexible.
Happier 2022 to everyone!
Hi, I'm Cecille. I have been an OFW in KSA for 13 long years. I have been there, done that. I'd say I was lucky because for most of those years, my family was with me. I'd like to share in this blog what makes those years worthwhile, the lessons I learned and bits and pieces of info that may pique your interest as bagong bayani.