First off, I love how so many of you showed up this morning to kick off Bridge Month. This was the fifth holiday season our tribe has been through and it always blows me away to see the level of commitment from everyone.
Major shoutout to all the spouses, roommates, pets and children who dealt with early alarms this morning.
January 1 is when people start to think about what they want to accomplish throughout the year. Everyone is talking about their goals. I find goals to be quite interesting actually. At some point in life, you become conditioned on how to create goals for yourself. They need to be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, related, timed) to be a good goal. If you have any sort of corporate job where you have to create annual goals, you’ll know what I’m talking about. You probably have a bunch of these goals that you have to hit every year. You probably couldn’t even repeat your goals that you have to achieve at work. Trust me, I know. When I worked in HR, I created the goals that people would ignore and consider as a joke. Yes, I know, this is extremely boring.
But if it’s your own goals, you’ll be more interested in them. You’ll want to accomplish them because they are yours. You created them for yourself. A few years ago, I had someone help me through the process of creating my own goals. It started with me figuring out what I want my life to be like in 10 years, because 10 years is a far enough that I don’t have to consider any barriers. From there, I created my own personal goals, my own health goals and my own career goals which would be one step closer towards that life I wanted. These areas made sure I was creating a balance so that I didn’t just focus on work (or running). I created a bunch of goals in each of those areas. Some of them, I crushed, and others, went by the wayside. I learned that it was ok. I learned that there was a reason why I focused on certain goals and ignored others. I was more motivated to crush these goals because I had a WHY. Each goal was one step in a larger process for me as I make my way towards that life. Some of those goals that got ignored, I started to wonder why I would give up on those instead of the others. I discovered a few things. I discovered that those goals weren’t the only step towards where I wanted to go, and as things changed, those goals needed to change. I discovered that I had to reduce the number of goals I had so that I could focus on the ones that I focused on.
I also wondered why some goals felt so much better than others when you crushed them. When I look back on some goals, certain ones stick out in my mind more than others. I realized that some of those goals were not FOR ME. Those goals were FOR someone else. I was either trying to achieve something to impress someone or gain their validation. No one should care about your own goals more than yourself, so if you’re creating a goal to impress someone else, you should probably start over. It’s actually just taking you off track from getting to where you want to go.
So, as you create or think of your goals for 2018, make sure to ask yourself these three things:
- WHY is this your goal?
- Is each goal FOR YOU?
- Are your goals BALANCED?
This year, I’m going to do some more exploring. And, as I continue to explore different ways to approach goals, this year, one of my goals is completing a training plan for a race. Yes, my goal is to go through the process. I haven’t even figured out the race yet. I’ll have a time that I will want to beat in that race, which I’ll use to set my paces. But that time will stay between my coach and me. I want to make sure I go through the process. The way I see it, being a certain speed won’t make me feel like I crushed a goal. Every time I’ve done any marathon training, the best part was the journey during the training. Yes, it was painful, and yes it wasn’t always fun. But I’ve learned more about myself during that training than during any race. The race was the victory lap.
And if it makes you feel any better, I still have trouble figuring out what my goals at work are.
Find the Good,
Nadim
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