…but, you should make them anyways.

As a follow-up to my last post, I want to elaborate on the whole process and purpose of making goals in the first place.

Setting a goal is like giving yourself a gift of a handmade wool christmas sweater. You put all of this love and care into making it, and it’s beautiful. You show it off to all of your friends, and it’s a talking piece when you arrive at the christmas party. But after you’ve worn it for a while, your neck starts getting a little scratchy. And then it keeps getting scratchier and itchier until you finally get home and throw it off as fast as you can, while your whole torso is red and irritated!

You should not feel guilty if you fail to meet a goal (take off your sweater mid-party), nor if you just lose interest. That’s not the point. The whole reason that you should make goals is to figure out “What is important to me?” The process of setting the goal, writing it down, then working towards that goal is the benefit itself.

Just to highlight, the process where you receive benefits is:

• Set the goal
• Write it down, and make plans around the goal
• Take steps every day towards reaching that goal
• Reassess, after working towards that goal for a little while.

Lets say you’re insane like me and decide that you want to run a marathon. That was a goal of mine from early 2021. The act of deciding that it’s important to you will help you get organized. Maybe you’ll make some calendar events, to remind yourself to go running 3-4 days per week. Maybe you get a new pair of running shoes and shorts, and rearrange your schedule a bit to make time to run. Since you’ve decided that you want to run a marathon, maybe you first find a 5k in a couple of months and sign up for that as a stepping-stone.

If you race a 5k and a 10k and decide that racing is too stressful, that’s fine! You don’t need to sign up for a marathon now. Chances are, at that point, you’ve build up a great habit of exercise, and you are probably just automatically eating healthier too as a nice side-effect.

Or, maybe you actually start to enjoy running, and it becomes a long-term hobby! But see, that’s the point – by setting a goal and putting effort towards it, you’re guaranteed success. Either outcome, finishing or quitting, you’ve done something good and learned a bit about yourself.

Just because you wore the lovely scratchy sweater to the party doesn’t mean you need to wear it all night.