In the past couple years, I have lost count of the number of times I have opened Word on my laptop and started writing pieces that never saw the light of day. They sat in my drafts and I simply just hoped I would find the motivation to finish them someday. The main reason for this was fear of judgement, not having the courage to share new blog posts because I was worried others wouldn’t like the things I wrote about or even read them in the first place. So, if you’re sitting here reading this, I’m sure you’ve caught on by now that I finally bit the bullet and actually went through with a post after nearly a 2-year break. From elementary school to college, my favorite class was always English and Literature. I loved being assigned topics to write about and expressing myself through my words, and that is something that has never changed. One of my goals for 2022 is to do more of the things that make me happy, and this is one of them.
Let’s Talk Goals & Habits
I recently finished the book Atomic Habits written by James Clear. This is a book I now recommend to everyone because I truly believe it can be applied to so many different aspects of life. It dives into habit building and how we naturally get too goal focused, we forget to pay attention to the necessary steps we need to take to achieve our goals (he refers to this as our systems). What we think should happen vs. what actually happens when aiming to achieve our goals is what makes or breaks us. I thought this would be a fitting topic to write on being that we are going into a new year and this is a time many of us are setting goals we would like to reach within the next 12 months.
For example: Some of my goals for this year are to travel more, spend more time being active, and make more time to do things I enjoy. Typically I just focus on the end result and don’t spend enough time focusing on the steps I need to be taking to get there. Our outcome is based on the effort we put in, so if we half-ass the things we’re doing because we are impatient to get our results, we’re setting ourselves up for failure. Usually at the beginning of the year I sit down and write out a list of goals I have, just the goals written down in a bullet-point list and nothing else. This year I sat down and wrote not only my goals, but the small everyday things I need to be doing to reach them.
Ultimately we need to want our goals to turn into habits to be able to really conquer them. What that means is when we reach goals, we shouldn’t just stop there because then we hit the “what’s next?” phase. We should want the things we achieve to stay with us and become a habit of our daily life by continuing to implement them. I for one will admit this is something I struggle with. In the past when I have reached goals I’ve set, I stopped putting further effort in when I finally got the outcome I desired. The result of doing this was I eventually lost the progress I made, and then what I had achieved goes back to being a goal again due to me not maintaining it. Maintaining our goals is what makes our habits. Think of it like this: You have a goal of losing 20 pounds. Once you lose those 20 pounds, you’re happy and stop practicing the healthy habits you started to reach your goal. Slowly overtime, you start gaining the weight back you had lost and eventually you are back at square one where you started. This is why habit building is essential to success.
For the sake of trying to keep this short and sweet, I’ll wrap up this post by encouraging you to take 5-10 minutes to think of the various different ways you can reach your goals for this year and turn them into habits. What steps are you going to commit to taking? How much time will you set aside each day to ensure success? It’s important to remember that small gradual changes lead to bigger and longer lasting results.
Most importantly, believe in yourself. There is nothing you aren’t capable of, you can achieve the things you dream.
I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Years!
It feels good to be back.
Until next time,
-D
