The new year always seems like the perfect time for new beginnings. It’s a moment when we can reflect on where our life is and where we want our life to be. A big part of that means goal setting. It’s easy with smaller tasks but what about the things that are life-changing? How do we set goals for the year?
Firstly, it always helps to look at long-term goals. Where do you want to be in ten years' time? What do you want your life to look like in five years? This means thinking about things like finances, accommodation, family, career, etc. The good thing about looking further into the future, is you aren’t forced to limit your dreams. You can focus on what truly matters to you and what is important to you.
The next step is to see what steps you could take this year, to bring you closer to that five-year goal. Say for example, in five years, you wished that you could be running your own marketing business. To get there, you would first need to actually register a business. That could mean officially with Companies House (if you’re in the UK) or if that feels like too much pressure, it could mean setting up a website and social media platforms for your business.
Similarly, if you want to have your own cooking show, you could start by regularly reviewing recipes online as well as creating your own and posting them to social media. We all have to start somewhere, but it’s easier to start setting short-term goals if we know where we are heading.
Once you have the goal or goals for this year based on your long-term goal, then you can start to build an action plan. That means giving yourself deadlines and seeing what you can do every month.
It’s always nice to have a goal of the month, in my opinion at least. It doesn’t have to be something really big but it gives you something to focus on and means that you are more likely to have completed your goal for the year. When we are in January, it feels like there is practically an infinite of time until December but time flies, and without having goals and plans in place, it’s easy to let time pass you by and not achieve the things that matter.
If we go back to the example of having your own cooking show, you could say that in January you are going to set up the social media channels, in February you’re going to record and edit a couple of videos. Then in March, you can try and promote those videos either by engaging with others on the platform or investing in advertising. In April, you could try writing down a few of your own recipes, and then in May your goal could be to contact agents for the upcoming book.
A dream turns into a goal when there are actionable steps.
If this doesn’t sound that appealing to you, there is another way to have your goals for the year. A lot of people create vision boards but that isn’t something that has worked for me personally yet. Instead, I look back at the things that I have wanted to do but haven’t for whatever reason.
This kind of goal setting isn’t about necessarily reaching your five or ten year dream life, but is rather making the most of the time you have now and ticking things off your list. Say you wanted to visit a few different places. Those could be your goals for the year but rather than just wishing that you could go to these places, you set a goal of when you will go (i.e. your birthday) and what you need to be able to go (i.e. what’s your budget, when to book time off, etc.).
Goal setting should be fun and it’s alright if your goal changes halfway through the year. The point of it is to help you with motivation, determination and to provide you with a sense of purpose. The more things we do that give us purpose, the happier we are. The difference with just wishing and goal setting is that you are actively writing it down and making a plan of how to make it happen rather than just waiting for it to happen.