Every year many people sit down and make a long list of resolutions they'd like to accomplish in the coming year. It's a grand idea and one that I tend to participate in every other year or so. But the downfall of this sort of plan is in the timing.
You may not be ready to make the changes you need to right at the first of the year. So, as the days tick on and turn to weeks after January 1st, what happens? You start to toss your resolutions to the side as too hard or not worth it or just no motivation to try.
The reason so many people fail at New Year's Resolutions is in the pressure to achieve right at the beginning of the year. People constantly ask you at work how you are doing with your Resolutions. You take on more than you can possibly handle and then you wonder why you fail.
Let me tell you I've been there. I've set about 10 goals every year with the hopes that I will be able to change myself or my habits so that I'm happier and can say that I succeeded. Just about every year 9 of them fail. Yup, I'm not a complete failure just mostly one.
But the issue was not if I could do them or not but in the timing. I wasn't ready to make most of the Resolutions I set for myself so they never got done. I'm constantly trying to be ready to lose weight. One of these times I will be ready and it will come off. I know it. But I take the right time for it to work.
Every goal we want to set requires three things to have a chance at working. We need the right time in our lives, planning and follow through. Lack just one of these things and we will not reach those dreams of ours.
So, you may be wondering why I'm covering this topic on a submissive newsletter. Every day I set goals for myself; be more obedient, remember to reply to requests and commands appropriately, research a certain topic to better understand it, practice my stretching so that I can be more flexible, etc. All of these things are to improve my submission. Hopefully, you are setting small goals for yourself too. At the end of this essay, I'd like to challenge you to set a few goals for yourself and your submission. Let's see some wonderful changes in you!
Setting goals have a few steps to make them work for you. Let's cover what those steps are.
MAKE THE GOAL VERY SPECIFIC
Saying you want to lose weight this year isn't a detailed enough goal for you to succeed easily. If you are more specific in your goals then reaching it will be more focused.
The reason you want to narrow the goal down to the exact result is so that as you plan and create tasks to reach that goal you won't lead yourself into a dead end or become overwhelmed with the scope of the goal and quit early.
Take, for example, you want to start a habit of exercising in the morning when you first get up. It's a great goal to have, but it's not specific enough. Within your morning routine when do you want to exercise? How long do you want to exercise? What form of exercise do you want to do? See what I mean?
But you can make this goal work if you make it specific. You can change it to Do 30 mins of Cardio from DVD after breakfast and before your shower. See how specific that is?
DEVELOP A PLAN TO REACH THE GOAL
Now that you have a specific goal you need to develop a plan to reach that goal. A plan is a general outline of how you are going to meet small goals leading up to the main goal. So, if we continue with exercising in the morning you could have a plan to build up to 30 mins, starting from 10. You could plan to get up 30 minutes earlier to accommodate your new routine. Each of these mini steps along the way is part of your plan.
Write your plan down. Make sure you keep it somewhere visible to remind you what you want to be doing.
SET TASKS TO STAY WITHIN THE PLAN
The tasks are the steps required to meet the mini goals and ultimately the final goal in your plan. Each part of your plan should have at least 1 task to accomplish it.
In the exercise example, we wanted to get up 30 minutes earlier to accommodate the exercise so for our tasks we will certainly be changing the alarm to reflect the change in schedule. Once the tasks within the plan for a specific mini goal are complete we can move to the next mini goal. Each of these is very important to the success of the overall goal.
REWARD SMALL SUCCESS
Every step in your plan requires a reward for achieving it. It doesn't have to be something large but you need to feel good about every success, no matter the size. Take for instance, the exercise goal. If one of your mini-goals in your plan was to get up 30 minutes earlier and you succeed in doing so without hitting the snooze for a whole week, then a reward would be helpful in maintaining your progress.
What type of rewards could you have? Well, everyone is different and the rewards that each person sets for themselves will also be varied. Always set rewards that will not undermine your success. So, a reward for getting up 30 minutes early for a week should not be that you get to sleep in the following day.
No matter how you go about it, setting realistic goals and then working towards success is a step by step process. You have the tools available to make changes in your life if you want them. It doesn't have to be overwhelming. Treat them like anything else in your life worth doing and you can make it.
Activity:
Set a realistic goal. Write out why you want to achieve the goal and the impact it will have on your life when you attain it. Follow the steps talked about in this article and map out the way to success. Keep a record of your progress!
Essays on the Web
photo by Alice Popkorn
