The Nuances of Goals
After revisiting my one blog about battling procrastination, I thought about the idea goals and why they may be hard to achieve. When thinking about that blog, I noticed that I never really stated what could go wrong with creating goals to assist with procrastination. After researching this information a little bit, I’ve found a multitude of reasons why goals can be so hard to fulfill. One of the main ideas with being successful with your goals is having accountability and motivation. Sometimes a compromise against your goals could simply be that they are worded negatively or the fact that goals people create feel more like chores than actual improvements. In order to create effective goals and become better at whatever you wish to, some minor changes with your goals should be made.
First of all, when creating goals, they should be smaller and slightly challenging to complete. You want to create them this way because you simply wouldn’t do them if it was too much to handle. The environment around you can also affect your goals, so it is important to make sure that there aren’t too many distractions to keep you off task. If you prevent distractions, you are well on your way to having more successful goals because the temptations to break them aren’t as prominent. One more thing with goals is that even the way that they are phrased can affect how effective they are. If things are phrased negatively, they can actually have the opposite effect on motivation. Instead, they should be phrased in a way so that the desired outcome is what is stated. Finally, the most important part of goals is to not minimize progress or be unhappy with your progress. This is because in order to grow, you must have a positive attitude as opposed to a negative attitude which will only prohibit progress. In general, goals should be created so you can improve, not berate yourself.
It is important for your goals to be challenging because goals are meant for you to grow as a person. If you could create a challenging goal for yourself then you will grow more than setting a goal that is easy for yourself. If you have an easy goal then you'll just be wasteing your time.
ReplyDeleteI think that the concept of New Year's goals is kind of silly. What makes the new year so different that we feel we must set new goals for ourselves? I'm sure the concept of "New Year's goals" has done more good for gyms trying to sell memberships than for the people making the goals. Still though, so many of us make them. For the past three years now, my mom has made the goal of "keeping the kitchen table clean of unnecessary items." Well I am looking at that table right now and I see a few water bottles, a few pairs of glasses, some hamburger buns that haven't been touched for days, a design piece, some phone chargers, allergy pills, a make-up kit, and, of course, the pile of mail. Do we consider that a success at keeping the table clean? I certainly don't think so. But we will all make goals again this year and I am sure "keeping the kitchen table clean" will be another goal thrown out there. But I've noticed that the goals we've succeeded at are the ones that we really want to succeed at. Work out more, eat better, travel more. Sure they are not easy, but if we have the drive to do them, we usually can. I think the real issue is that we truly don't care too much about what gets thrown on the kitchen table. But maybe this year is the year.
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