Setting clear goals is one of the single most powerful ways to achieve something meaningful in life. Yet even for those who set goals, and have every intention to deliver, one habit they sometimes overlook is to give their goals a regular refresh. Considering we’re almost at the half-way mark for 2023, now’s a good time to give your goals a refresh and perhaps, even hit reset on some of them.
While this might feel to some as cheating on initial goals set out in January, or ay any point since, and as few might say, it moves the goal post, there are several arguments as to why it’s critical to assess not just progress against the goal, but the goal itself.
Here below are some reasons.
Your goal may no longer be relevant
Even the most well-intended goals could fade in relevance with the passage of time.
For example, perhaps you’d set a goal to learn a certain skill to help with a project you were working on. But over time, it could be that the project has changed shape or you’ve been reallocated to a different project since.
It’s therefore important to assess if your goals continue to add value and still stand up to scrutiny in relevance while resisting the temptation to be dogmatic.
Your goals may have been too ambitious
Let’s face it. We sometimes set aggressive goals that require godlike effort on our part to achieve them. The problem here is that if we’re unable to shore up the energy required to pull them off, we could spend the rest of the year beating ourselves up about our lacking resolve. Or worse, we could decide goal setting isn’t for us and we’ll just take each day as it comes.
For example, it may be that you’d set yourself a goal to visit the gym every single day, no matter what life throws at you. But perhaps having done that for the initial two weeks, life got in the way. Maybe you missed a few days while you were away at a friend’s wedding, and having lost continuity, you didn’t restart.
By reassessing what happened and why, you might be able to reset and begin with a more reasonable goal.
You could have over-achieved your goal
At the other end of this scenario is one where you might have already achieved what you’d wanted to get from the year, and doing more of it no longer gives you a high.
For example, it may be that you wanted to be able to touch type at 50 wpm, and having hit a speed of 60 already, the goal is somewhat complete.
If this were to happen, you might like to revisit the goal, such as increasing the target speed, or the accuracy, or retiring the goal as a job well done!
New factors could have come into play
While your goal might still be pertinent, there could be new information that requires you to reassess the goal or even just its timing.
For example, you might have wanted to sign up for a marathon over the course of the year, but it could be that you’ve been advised by the doctor to avoid long distance running for a year or so.
In such scenarios, replacing the goal with a new one could help you make the best use of your time and focus your energy on what you can do as opposed to ruminating over what you can’t.
Conclusion
Many of us set goals. Yet only few of us track our goals and even fewer achieve them all.
Though setting goals is a great way to set intention, a clutter of outdated and irrelevant goals that no longer excite us, can send us down the path of negative self-talk and do more harm than good.
Therefore, besides setting some clear goals upfront – a regular, even continuous refresh, is vital to purposeful existence.
I’m an accredited coach and focus on personal coaching for financial services executive. I cover topics such as purpose and personal fulfilment, mental clarity and structured thinking. If I can be of help, please drop me a line for a free discovery call.
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